One of the good points of Linux is that is easy to customize the partitioning scheme of the disk and put each directory (/home, /var, etc) in different partitions and/or different disk.
Then we can use different file system/configurations for each of them for make them better. Examples:
- noatime is a mount option to not write access time on the files.
- data=writeback is an option to lazy write metadata on new files.
- ext3/4 has journaling that make the partition more secure in case of a crash.
- bigger blocks make the partition waste more space, but make it faster to read and may become more fragmented. (not sure)
Then: What are the best filesystem/configurations for each directory?
Note: given the answer of Patches, will only discuss /, /home and /var only.
/var -> It's modified constantly, it write logs, cache, temporal, etc.
/home -> stores important files.
/ -> stores everything else (/etc and /usr should be here)