Looks like in more recent kernels 2.6.31 I think, we can remove the journal on ext4 and use it on ssd drives:
If you have a distro that uses uuid's for drive names in fstab and or grub, you might break booting until upgrades are in place to allow the tools that id the uuid of the boot device to propagate! (You have been warned)... On a read-only partition mind you! # tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda1 Not sure if this is needed as well... # tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sda1 and add to fstab the writeback option for the ones you removed the journal on UUID=blah-blah / ext4 noatime,barrier=0,data=writeback,nobh,commit=100,nouser_xattr 0 1 Check after reboot with this: # dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1 And see that you don't have has_journal any more.