Most of our Linux servers/desktops will have a filesystem /localtmp. When we install Linux, most of the hard drive on a server or desktop will go to this filesystem. It is meant to be local scratch disk space, available for all users, that will persist across Operating System upgrades/re-installation.

Files in /localtmp are not backed up. Any file you delete can not be recovered. Every storage device will eventually fail, and in the event of a hard drive failure we will not be able to recover files from this filesystem.

The advantage of using the /localtmp filesystem is that the disk is local to the server, and performance can typically be better in comparison to network filesystems, especially since most new servers use SSD disks for their primary disk drives.