[Ben Sch]

I recently upgraded from a 4GB HD to a 60GB HD on my Mac G3 with OS8.6 . The HFS adjusts the file sizes based on block sizes in relation to the available HD space. So, before I increased my storage space, a SimpleText file of 7k data would occupy maybe 11k HD space. However, on my new HD that same 7k of data in a SimpleText file will now occupy a whopping 165k, or more. This is very frustrating because even though I've increased my hard drive capacity it seems that my file compacity has not. I researched the file structure a bit at this location: Inside Macintosh: Files

It seems that the OS determines the block sizes based on the HD size and then follows that sizing from then on. I partitioned my 60GB drive into several smaller drives, but this did not solve it.

Does anyone know of a Utility or some way of disabling this feature of the OS? Does anyone know if the new OSX operates differently? (I'm thinking that with the Unix-base maybe it would have a different approach to managing files and directories).

Any info is much appreciated.

-Ben

[iNeusch]

Didn't HDT format with different block sizes?

[Cipher13]

You formatted it in HFS+ right?

Is UFS any better?

[benh57]

Originally posted by Ben Sch:
<STRONG>I recently upgraded from a 4GB HD to a 60GB HD on my Mac G3 with OS8.6 . The HFS adjusts the file sizes based on block sizes in relation to the available HD space. </STRONG>

In 2001 no-one should be using HFS. HFS+ is vastly superior, in many ways, including better block size.

-B

[Ben Sch]

Thank you for the recommendations to use HFS+. I do not specifically remember choosing an option to use HFS+ over HFS when re-formatting the drive, but seeing how HFS+ was introduced with OS8.1, I would guess that my OS8.6 system is using HFS+. At Technical Note TN1150: HFS Plus Volume Format the HFS+ benefits over HFS are outlined. It mentions that 1) the Number of allocation blocks is 32-bits as opposed to 16-bits, and 2) the catalog node size is 4kb as opposed to 512 bytes. (There are other differences between HFS+ and HFS, but they don't really apply to topic).

Please let me know if anyone is familiar with how OSX handles files, or if there is any trick to use with OS8.6 to limit the expansion of block sizes when they use "empty" space.

Thank you in advance for any more info.

[chabig]

Your hard disk must be HFS. You definitely need to convert to HFS+. The easiest way for you to do this would be to purchase Plusmaker from Alsoft.
http://www.alsoft.com/PlusMaker/index.html

Under HFS+ your block size will be 4K.

Chris

[Ben Sch]

Thanks for all the info. I'm going to give the software a try.

Thanks again.

-Ben

[Chris_G]

Alsoft also makes a product called PlusMaximizer which allows even smaller allocation blocks than HFS+ (0.5 kB I believe).