# Block device vs files **URL:** https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/block-device-vs-files/4670 **Category:** Tuning **Created:** [October 5, 2017, 12:29am UTC](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/block-device-vs-files/4670 "2017-10-05T00:29:09Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 2
### Author: ![kporter](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.aerospike.com/kporter/32/515_2.png) [@kporter](https://discuss.aerospike.com/u/kporter) #### Post date: [October 6, 2017, 10:48pm UTC](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/block-device-vs-files/4670/2 "2017-10-06T22:48:44Z")
Yes you can use a partition and we would recommend that over files for the reasons discussed here: > [@Using filesystem to have better caching via VFS](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/using-filesystem-to-have-better-caching-via-vfs/4565/7): > > TLDR; We found file system to be really bad when the system is running low on memory Details… We actually experimented for the same reason - to see if we can get free read-cache. We tested in the past comparing raw SSD, ext3 and ext4 filesystems. While ext3 was a bit poor than raw SSD, ext4 was better than raw SSD (a bit inconsistent but better). But the fun ends there! While the short-term benchmarks show everything in good light, there were some really bad nightmares when our customers used … --- _[View the full topic](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/block-device-vs-files/4670)._