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. If we need to upgrade the operating system on a server, this partition will not be erased and anything stored on this partition will be in the same place after the upgrade.

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.