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Tune2fs allows to change inode size from default 128 bytes to almost anything (but it should be power of two). What are reasons for changing default inode size?

Here http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-7433 its written, that this can be done to be able to store ACL attributes inside inodes. What else can be stored inside an inodes?

Is there any reason to increase inode size on modern high-capacity drives (2TB and more)?

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I know a reason not to change the inode size from 128 bytes - Ext2IFS will no longer be able to mount your partition. If you are using this driver to access your Linux partitions from Windows, you should take care to keep your inode size at 128 bytes. – DevSolar Jun 1 '10 at 22:33
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I think by default current versions of mkfs.ext2/3/4 default to 256 byte inode size (see /etc/mke2fs.conf). This IIRC enables nanosecond timestamps with ext4, and as you say, more extended attributes fit within the inode. Such extended attributes are, for instance, ACL's, SELinux labels, some Samba specific labels.

Bigger inodes of course waste a little bit of space, and as you make them bigger you get into diminishing returns territory pretty quickly. The default 256 bytes is probably a perfectly good compromise for most situations.

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On my systems with CentOS 5.3 inode size is 128 by default. – FractalizeR May 20 '10 at 11:12
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@FractalizeR. Yes, mke2fs on RHEL/CentOS 5 dates back to 2006. I think the default changed a few years ago, sometime when ext4 was declared stable maybe. – janneb May 20 '10 at 11:20
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On CentOS 5.5, /etc/mke4fs.conf does specify a default inode size of 256. – sciurus Mar 6 '11 at 19:06
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