A quick tip to improve performance on an ext3 based file system. Change from the default Ordered(file contents are written to disk before associated meta-data is marked as committed in the journal. default with ext3) method of journaling to the Writeback method (meta-data is journaled but file-contents are not.) Writeback is much faster but you can get out of order writes after a crash, so dont do it on a production level system. Here’s how: (note: I highly recommend making a back up of your filesystem before you attempt this. Otherwise, I offer no warranty with this 
)
sudo nano /etc/fstab
Now, you should see a similar line to this:
/dev/hdc2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime, 0 1
That’s the mount line of your filesystem for the root system. After the last mod entry (noatime,) in this case, type the following:
data=writeback
After entering the line, hold down Ctrl+O to write out the line to /fstab, and finally type Ctrl+X to quit nano. I fully recommend using nano over one of the various GUI editors like kate or gedit, primarly because there’ll come a time when you need to be able to use a text based editor.
Finally, we need to change the actual journaling mode of ext3 to writeback through the following:
sudo tune2fs - o journal_data_writeback /dev/hdc2 (replace hdc2 with ur drive)
Thats it, if you wish to double check its switched just type
sudo tune2fs -I /dev/hdc2