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New filesystem?
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danengel
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Dec 20, 2003, 06:07 AM
 
I heard HFS sucks, and that Apple hired the BeOS-filesystem guy. Also, Windows gets WinFS soon.

When will we finally see a modern, per-user-metadata-rich filesystem which rocks as much as OS X?
     
Chuckit
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Dec 20, 2003, 06:50 AM
 
I don't know that HFS+ (no Mac OS X computers use HFS) would be said to "suck." Apple did hire Be's Dominic Giampaolo, and HFS+ journalling has been the result so far.

What, precisely, would be involved in your hypothetical "modern, per-user metadata-rich file system" that HFS+ either can't do or can't do well?
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proton
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Dec 20, 2003, 07:19 AM
 
Originally posted by danengel:
I heard HFS sucks, and that Apple hired the BeOS-filesystem guy. Also, Windows gets WinFS soon.

When will we finally see a modern, per-user-metadata-rich filesystem which rocks as much as OS X?
WinFS is a layer on top of NTFS. It is not a new filesystem. Now if Apple can get some of the cool features of NTFS into HFS+, and add some more cool stuff from BeOS, then we'll have a rocking filesystem

- proton
     
pat++
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Dec 20, 2003, 07:41 AM
 
Originally posted by danengel:
I heard HFS sucks, and that Apple hired the BeOS-filesystem guy. Also, Windows gets WinFS soon.
Soon? WinFS is supposed to be in Longhorn which is not due before 2006....


When will we finally see a modern, per-user-metadata-rich filesystem which rocks as much as OS X?
I would bet this will happen much before the release of Longhorn. 10.4 / End of 2004 seems to be a good guess...
     
Millennium
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Dec 20, 2003, 09:23 AM
 
Originally posted by danengel:
I heard HFS sucks, and that Apple hired the BeOS-filesystem guy.
I wouldn't say that HFS+ sucks per se -it's still ahead of many other filesystems in some aspects, notably its reliance on immutable File IDs- but it's old, and some of the structures on it are rather primitive. They could use something better.

They did hire the BeOS filesystem guy, however. You were right about that one.
Also, Windows gets WinFS soon.
I don't know if I'd call three years from now "soon", but you're right that Windows is getting some new filesystem enhancements. It should be noted that they are not getting a new filesystem; "WinFS" is a misnomer (probably a deliberate one) in that regard. What they are getting is a different way of searching for files.
When will we finally see a modern, per-user-metadata-rich filesystem which rocks as much as OS X?
The basic filesystem infrastructure of such a search program is already in place: HFS+ has had this for a while. Only problem is, nobody -not even Apple- has ever really used it for anything. This is likely to come with 10.4, with a search program similar to WinFS.

Note that the decktop metaphor is likely to stay in both Windows and OSX, because it maintains one huge advantage over relational systems: navigability. Knowing nothing about any files on the system, I can reach all of them in a basically consistent, logical manner. The sorts of relational searching that WinFS and its counterparts will complement this model, not replace it.

I also suspect that it won't have the massive impact that the pundits say it will. Relational searching assumes that a person knows only small pieces of metadata about the file they're looking for. Most home users know more than that about their own files, except in a few specific instances (large music collections, for example). For users such as these, relational searching will be mostly redundant.
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tooki
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Dec 20, 2003, 12:51 PM
 
If HFS/HFS+ "sucks" so bad, how come it's always the Windows people (with FAT and NTFS) whose machines always "crash" in such a fashion that they think it's normal to reformat and lose all their data every year or two?

tooki
     
yukon
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Dec 20, 2003, 01:25 PM
 
HFS+ doesn't suck to be honest. but it's missing features that the shiny new filesystems have, and some parts of it are a bit off....

things like actual in-filesystem journaling, the amazing threading and speed of BeFileSystem (BFS), maybe concepts like what ReiserFS is using to speed things up, the slight fragmentation issue (it's still there! never as bad as some FS's, but it's there), meta-data like what BeOS had (it's not that pervasive in HFS+, but whats there is hardly used)....and many many other issues and limitations, that people who understand more about the structures HFS uses, would know better than I.

edit: it's usually not the FS that's dead with windows, tooki, it's the system that's killed...windows applications are tied to the OS through the registry, and PC users don't seem to be tied much to their files....personally never lost a file here. though, malware like boot-sector viruses can kill the filesystem on Windows, might be good to clear the HD as preventative maintenance every once in a while for them ;-D
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Nebagakid
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Dec 20, 2003, 01:36 PM
 
so meta-data is information about data right?

Like, ID3 tags for audio files? I am down with this. So, we can just create playlists and smart playlists without actually moving the data! yeah!

time to go rate my papers, 2 star, 2 star, 2 star, 1 star, 2 star, 3 star!
     
Judge_Fire
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Dec 20, 2003, 01:59 PM
 
Here's Apple's Tech note on HFS+, in case someone else feels this nerdy on a saturday evening:

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html

J
     
ryju
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Dec 20, 2003, 08:16 PM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
If HFS/HFS+ "sucks" so bad, how come it's always the Windows people (with FAT and NTFS) whose machines always "crash" in such a fashion that they think it's normal to reformat and lose all their data every year or two?

tooki
Or once a month for most of my PC-using friends..
     
gralem
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Dec 20, 2003, 09:35 PM
 
Originally posted by proton:
WinFS is a layer on top of NTFS. It is not a new filesystem. Now if Apple can get some of the cool features of NTFS into HFS+, and add some more cool stuff from BeOS, then we'll have a rocking filesystem

- proton
Name one "cool feature" of NTFS. Plus, NTFS is such a modern file system.

There will be a revolution in the Filesystem. It is a great untouched areas of computing. It will probably be the defining computing feature of the 2000's (the "aughts?"). Apple will define it and all others will follow.

---gralem
     
Telusman
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Dec 21, 2003, 02:37 AM
 
I'd say this is a total non sequitor, it's not the file system that makes the system "Crash" and "reformat every year" it's the OS itself.

NTFS is a very good file system with some very good features. Fragmentation isn't nearly as big of a problem as it is with FAT32. I'll take NTFS over some file system hands down.... even maybe HFS+

Personally, i'd rather have a decent running system on UFS, but as i found out in 10.3, which i could have sworn "better compatability with UFS" was a feature, you cant actually install Panther on a UFS disk anymore.... Other partitions can be UFS, but not your system disk...

UFS is an excellent, efficient file system, lacking yes in certain ways but the efficiencey is heads over HFS+ however, it's noted that many apps wont run if they're installed on a UFS filesystem, which is probably why Apple disabled it, which is stupid, i feel they should have fixed the issues rather than avoiding them all together.

I hope to see a more efficient file system that isn't as antiquated as HFS/HFS+ in the near future.

-Telusman


Originally posted by tooki:
If HFS/HFS+ "sucks" so bad, how come it's always the Windows people (with FAT and NTFS) whose machines always "crash" in such a fashion that they think it's normal to reformat and lose all their data every year or two?

tooki
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proton
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Dec 21, 2003, 08:17 AM
 
Originally posted by gralem:
Name one "cool feature" of NTFS.
Access Control Lists.
On the fly compression.
On the fly encryption.
Multiple streams/forks (HFS+ has been designed for this to possibly be added later, however it has not been done at this stage).

I didn't say it was a perfect filesystem, or anything like that. Just that it has some cool features.

- proton
     
wireframe
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Dec 21, 2003, 10:09 AM
 
XFS is the way to go, probably one of the most flexible, and powerful filesystems out there. It's been ported to Linux for a while now, although I've not used it, heard great reports. I'm running it on an old sgi machine, unbelievable performance.

http://sgi.com/software/xfs/

http://sgi.com/software/xfs/overview.html
     
Millennium
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Dec 21, 2003, 10:40 AM
 
Originally posted by proton:
On the fly compression.
On the fly encryption.
These do not need to be part of the filesystem. They can be more than adequately implemented at a higher level, and frankly it's better to do it that way. The low-level filesystem code should contain only what's necessary for the filesystem to run, to keep things simpler to implement and therefore less prone to bugs. Filesystem bugs, after all, are Really Bad Things.

For the same reason, there's no real reason for journaling to be an actual part of the filesystem. As HFS+ has shown, it can be implemented at a higher level, again keeping the complexity of the low-level filesystem code down.
Multiple streams/forks (HFS+ has been designed for this to possibly be added later, however it has not been done at this stage).
Even MFS had multiple forks; HFS+ continues this. They are not used now as often as they once were (they were extremely commonplace in OS9 and earlier), but they are there.

NTFS doesn't use its multi-fork architecture either. The only reason they even have it is so they can say "me too".
I didn't say it was a perfect filesystem, or anything like that. Just that it has some cool features.
It has a cool feature, namely the access control lists. All the rest, either HFS+ already has or aren't legitimate features of a filesystem anyway.
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proton
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Dec 22, 2003, 08:15 AM
 
Originally posted by Millennium:
These do not need to be part of the filesystem. They can be more than adequately implemented at a higher level, and frankly it's better to do it that way. The low-level filesystem code should contain only what's necessary for the filesystem to run, to keep things simpler to implement and therefore less prone to bugs. Filesystem bugs, after all, are Really Bad Things.

For the same reason, there's no real reason for journaling to be an actual part of the filesystem. As HFS+ has shown, it can be implemented at a higher level, again keeping the complexity of the low-level filesystem code down.
Indeed, neither of these need to be implemented in the core of the filesystem. The core filesystem need only implement some kind of metadata system that would allow the OS to tag a file as being encrypted or compressed, and the encryption and compression can be done at a higher level, say in the VFS code. I guess this really comes down to a division of what is actually the filesystem code, is only HFS+/NTFS the filesystem code, or is VFS part of the filesystem code. Afterall, VFS is pretty essential to the use of the filesystem.

The Journalling code in HFS+ is well and truly in the filesystem code. The journalling in Mac OS X is in fact spread across the VFS and HFS+ code. VFS's journalling code (xnu/bsd/vfs/vfs_journal.[c|h]) implements the main logic of writing the journal to the disk and reading it again as required. However, almost all the HFS+ implementation files (xnu/bsd/hfs/) need to call into the journalling code for it to accomplish anything. Is this part of the filesystem code? Yes, of course it is.

In fact the way that HFS+ handles the journal, and indeed other pieces of data it requires are as invisible files. In the InsertMatch routine (xnu/bsd/hfs/hfs_search.c:1090) there is code to magically make the HFS+ private metadata directory disappear, along with the journal.

Similar to the journal, for truly transparent encryption and compression to be implemented, it must be implemented in the filesystem somewhere. On OS X (and other Unix systems) this would most likely be in the VFS layer, but while it is higher level than the pure filesystem format code of each filesystem, it is certainly an integral part of the filesystem code overall.

Originally posted by Millennium:
Even MFS had multiple forks; HFS+ continues this. They are not used now as often as they once were (they were extremely commonplace in OS9 and earlier), but they are there.

NTFS doesn't use its multi-fork architecture either. The only reason they even have it is so they can say "me too".
NTFS's multiple streams are available to standard application developers. Indeed Microsoft Knowledge Base article 105763 HOWTO: Use NTFS Alternate Data Streams shows the use of named streams on an NTFS volumes. This is support for a (relatively) infinite number of streams in a file.

HFS/HFS+ support a data and a resource fork. Additional forks are not currently supported. As documented in the HFS Plus Volume Format developer tech note, HFS+ does not at current support an arbitrary number of name forks in a file (see header Future Support for Named Forks). This is a useful feature in allowing the storage of arbitrary metadata by application developers, as well as a number of other features.

Originally posted by Millennium:
It has a cool feature, namely the access control lists. All the rest, either HFS+ already has or aren't legitimate features of a filesystem anyway.
Once again, this depends on your definition of what code the filesystem is. Just about all features of various filesystems can be implemented on top of another filesystem, through various means. Consider that Apple can store the resource fork of files on filesystems that do not support it. There are always ways of implementing these features on filesystems, whether they be an ideal way or not. HFS+ certainly has room for a great number of features to be added to it, especially with it's flexible attribute file.

- proton
     
khufuu
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Dec 22, 2003, 11:49 AM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
If HFS/HFS+ "sucks" so bad, how come it's always the Windows people (with FAT and NTFS) whose machines always "crash" in such a fashion that they think it's normal to reformat and lose all their data every year or two?

tooki
I've never had to do that on any of my windows machines. Before I switched I heard more about Mac users having to do that than I did PC users.
     
tooki
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Dec 22, 2003, 01:26 PM
 
In over 10 years of using Macs, I've never lost data to OS or filesystem malfunction. (The only losses have been to media failure, of floppy and zip disks and CD-R.)

It seems to be commonplace on PCs, if even 10 percent of the stories are believable.

tooki
     
yukon
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Dec 22, 2003, 01:29 PM
 
To be honest, yeah, compression in the filesystem isn't a great idea....it's like having an MP3 player built into Mach or something. But still, I'd like some kind of automatic compresson.

Imagine an "optimization" routine that you could run, that would analyze the files on your disk, taking into consideration activity size and compressibility, and would compress the best candidates. I have a number of things "archived" away, things like 10mb textfiles and such, that would help save a lot of space were it all compressed, though it's a pain to do it manually.

Windows2000 has something like this, some kind of "compress applications not used lately" thing (it's in Disk Cleanup i believe), I wouldn't trust it to not create a massive slowdown or lock away data from recovery in case of corruption, though.

Encryption, yeah, that would be nice actually. Rather than encrypt some files, encrypt the drive, which includes the swap files etc. By doing that, you ensure all your data is safe, even if someone physically takes your drive. Not so much need to write all zeros to a drive if the files were first written to it encrypted, etc. IMHO, encrypted disk images are great, but a little too high-level...

edit: I've never lost a file, ever. I use Macs, and the PC (gaming/P2P on the cheap) is reliant on my G4 for the installers and new file storage. I reformat the PC every few months when Win2k starts blinking out...my current solution is actually DeepFreeze, keep the OS where it always has been so it can't break itself....i wish WINE was more compatible or VMWare did games....
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khufuu
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Dec 23, 2003, 01:58 AM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
In over 10 years of using Macs, I've never lost data to OS or filesystem malfunction. (The only losses have been to media failure, of floppy and zip disks and CD-R.)

It seems to be commonplace on PCs, if even 10 percent of the stories are believable.

tooki
I have to say the same for the flip side.
     
tooki
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Dec 24, 2003, 05:13 AM
 
Meaning...?

tooki
     
sanity assassin
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Dec 24, 2003, 06:57 AM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
Meaning...?

tooki

I guess, that Windows based pc's don't seem to be as prone to crashes, or loss of data as people might think. I can attest to that too, got a few P3, and xeon machines that me and my brother built. We used them in a special effects studio and don't remember ever losing data, or having to re-install windows 2000, in fact, two of them still run NT4.
I think it's probably due to bad luck, or one's own fault if a machine loses data for whatever reason.

Got to say though, it's only on the Mac that I've heard of scary stories such as, installing this might wipe your drive; luckily i've never had that happen on the mac I've got, but does seem extreme.
     
yukon
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Dec 24, 2003, 09:31 PM
 
I'd have to disagree on the quality of Windows 2000. I must say, it's the best Windows ever made (and I have experiance with all versions 1 through XP Pro, not 2003 yet). But it's no Linux.

I have to put add a firewall behind NAT to keep it secure (try it, read the logs). I need to keep the virusscan up-to-date, I've had too many virri (caught because I update). I do not use IE, that's prettymuch a joke when it comes to security. I actually run DeepFreeze to stop the system from degrading (which is almost working...). I patch it as soon as patches are out, and I believe that's the problem...

I have to reinstall it every few months. I lose no data because it's backed up on my G4, but I reformat anyway. SP4 is on there now, and I've been having reoccurring problems with slow/creeping stalling of applications and eventually the system, happened on a clean install w/ SP4 (which i believe is the problem). Without it, I'm not certain what security holes I'd be opening myself up to. I find that after a number of programs have been installed, the system's flakiness gets way worse. The number of utilities I need to secure Windows from itself and the possibilities for exploiting system weaknesses is laughable (adaware/adwatch, spybot, sygate, mcafee virusscan, deepfreeze, mozilla/firebird...). This "Professional" operating system requires more maintenance than any MacOS I've ever used.

I use it for games so it's no huge trouble once it's setup, and I have _NO_ idea how anyone could possibly get any work done on a Windows machine without a Macintosh sheilding it. (/offtopic rant)
     
ryaxnb
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Dec 25, 2003, 12:02 AM
 
Did you boot up from the startup disk? You can't format the startup disk. I can't believe Apple removed the format startup disk as UFS option, especially with UFS being faster for multi-operation disk access.
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tooki
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Dec 26, 2003, 03:03 PM
 
On OS X, UFS is most decidedly not faster than HFS+!!!!

Have you ever actually compared the speed of a given Mac running OS X under the two filesystems? Under UFS, it turns as slow as molasses in January.

No doubt Apple could make the necessary optimizations to make UFS as fast as or faster than HFS+ -- but why would they?

By the way, let me take this opportunity to remind people that "UFS" is a fuzzy little acronym -- it means different things to different people. UFS from OS X is different from UFS from AIX, or A/UX, or Solaris or IRIX, or HP/UX... each is a different variation of UFS, and they're not mutually intelligible.

tooki
     
CatOne
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Dec 26, 2003, 09:32 PM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
If HFS/HFS+ "sucks" so bad, how come it's always the Windows people (with FAT and NTFS) whose machines always "crash" in such a fashion that they think it's normal to reformat and lose all their data every year or two?

tooki
tooki --

Gotta call B.S. on this one. I don't know of widespread problems with "crashes" and data loss on Windows systems (and I've used them a lot). NTFS is a good file system, and a crash is a crash (if it's an HD crash) -- not related to the file system.
     
   
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