transparent-compression · shipping · also Transparent compression

Transparent filesystem compression

Filesystem-managed compression of eligible file data that preserves the original logical bytes exposed to applications.

In Btrfs, changing compression policy affects new writes, leaving existing data untouched. A defragmentation-selected algorithm applies to that operation, not all future writes. [1]

Attempting compression is not a guarantee that each block is stored compressed: even compress-force may retain an uncompressed representation. [1]

Relations

related
reflink, filesystem-defragmentation, copy-on-write, file-extent

Citations

  1. Btrfs-progs v6.16: Compression, new writes and operation-local policy (accessed 2026-10-16)

Further reading

  1. Hesela: Fast file clones and deferred copying costs (accessed 2026-10-16)
Sources & caveats

JSON: /data/terms/transparent-compression.json