# Go-ds-flatfs vs go-ds-leveldb **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [January 16, 2021, 9:12am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/go-ds-flatfs-vs-go-ds-leveldb/9858 "2021-01-16T09:12:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![krishraghuram](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/krishraghuram/32/4335_2.png) [@krishraghuram](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/krishraghuram)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 9:12am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/go-ds-flatfs-vs-go-ds-leveldb/9858/1 "2021-01-16T09:12:30Z")
I understand that there is some connection/relation between these two, but I’m not sure how they are connected/related. My initial understanding was that the metadata of “what blocks are locally available” is stored in the leveldb inside `$IPFS_PATH/datastore`, and the actual block data is stored in the `$IPFS_PATH/blocks`. But, after digging around a bit, I noticed two things, 1 - [Blockstore uses prefix `"blocks"`](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs-blockstore/blob/7adc396ab4b40c660c72d215b3a58999b6f63413/blockstore.go#L24) 2 - After adding a bunch of files to my IPFS, I looked at the keys in the leveldb, and could not find a single key containing `"blocks"` prefix. I could only see `/pins` and `/providers` This leads me to think that, in the default profile, both the leveldb and flatfs datastores are used - leveldb for metadata like pins, provider records etc. and flatfs for actually storing the blocks. And the leveldb does not contain ANY data/metadata about what is stored in the flatfs datastore. ---
**Author:** ![krishraghuram](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/krishraghuram/32/4335_2.png) [@krishraghuram](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/krishraghuram)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 9:15am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/go-ds-flatfs-vs-go-ds-leveldb/9858/2 "2021-01-16T09:15:22Z")
(Apologies for the poor way in which I asked the above question) Here is what I understand about flatfs and leveldb datastores now. Please correct me if any part of below statements are wrong. - [go-ds-flatfs](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ds-flatfs) is a datastore implementation that is used only to store blocks. The data is actually stored as files in the filesystem, specifically in the `$IPFS_PATH/blocks` folder. - [go-ds-leveldb](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ds-leveldb) is a datastore implementation that uses leveldb to store everything (like pins, provider records) except blocks. It does not store any data/metadate about the blocks at all. The data is stored as leveldb key value pairs. The leveldb location is `$IPFS_PATH/datastore`. Thank you 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![stebalien](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/stebalien/32/156_2.png) [@stebalien](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/stebalien)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 5:19pm UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/go-ds-flatfs-vs-go-ds-leveldb/9858/3 "2021-01-17T17:19:16Z")
Your understanding is mostly correct. Really, they’re just two different datastores: - go-ds-flatfs is a very simple flat-file datastore that can _only_ store blocks and doesn’t really implement all the features we expect datastores to implement (e.g., sorted queries, etc.). - go-ds-leveldb is a general-purpose datastore that can store anything. However, it doesn’t perform very well when storing large blobs of data (e.g., blocks). By default, go-ipfs uses flatfs for blocks, and leveldb for everything else. You can also replace one or both with go-ds-badger or mix and match by “mounting” datastores on top of each other.