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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: SHADES on October 14, 2003, 12:52:51 AM
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Looking into docs for PFS I no longer understand why any AMIGA user would not want to use this file system.
Ok, that's not fair, use whatever you want to.
But PFS supports over the 4 gig barrier etc and won't corrupt files even in the middle of writing ie it doesn't update the witten to pointer until the file has been completly written to the drive then points to it so, no lost data. this even kicks NTFS, or LINUX in the head. Linux still need validation on crashes.
Anyway, I would like to know if anyone has thoughts as to SFS as i haven't tried this filesystem yet and I know it may be hard to get PFS now. Is SFS better than PFS?
Still, PFS, what a great filesystem :)
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can´t say what´s better ... i use SFS and my miggy works fine with this :-D
afaik these filesystems are very similar (technically), therefor both imho both are ok.
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here is a clue , i moved away from pfs1,2,3 (latest i used 3 for about 3 years.) to sfs ,
i havent had any problem so far but speed is slower on sfs compared to pfs3 BUT! i changed due to pfs has a tendency to crash! and when it does... it crash so hard that you have to reinstall yer whole partition ;(
there aint any "working" repair tools for pfs , they claim they do...but they only postphone em till later so it can crash you BAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!
i tried the tools on sfs , they work ..but if they will rescue all data in a big crash....i guess time will tell.
nothing really beats FFS but sadly its WAY too slow and the validation quirks are way too annoying (validation error....bleh) and well ofcourse the gb barrier's :D
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That's so weird. I have run PFS2 since it came out and migrated to 3 . I run both versions ie the ds version (direct SCSI) and the normal for IDE drives and both CPU options ie 68020 and 68040 and I have never had a problem. the only thing I have ever had to do was correctly size up my "rollover file" I run a 1200 and 4k :)
I have also used the PFS recovery tools when incorectly deleting files.
The only time I have heard of PFS crashing is under 3.0 when the mask and max transfer values were set incorrectly. But the values for these settings are in the docs.
Really strange. Must be going on 10 years for using the filesystem. Not bad odds for me and no invlaid disk in that time period.
Anyway, I just wanted to know if this SFS has any improvement over PFS as there's not a lot of info in the SFS docs.
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I have never used SFS but do use PFS3. Never had a problem with it except when using a GVP 060 TRex.
The drive will not show up with the GVP controller. All othe controllers I have used with it works great. I have never had a crash with PFS3 but your milage may vary :-D
Stew
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PFS 3 is killer, it was one of my best software
purchases ever.
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Anyway, I would like to know if anyone has thoughts as to SFS as i haven't tried this filesystem yet and I know it may be hard to get PFS now. Is SFS better than PFS?
Still, PFS, what a great filesystem :)
The fact that more people have experience (good ones at that!) with PFS than SFS might say something to answer your question! :-)
I ran PFS 2 & 3 on both my 4000 and on Frankenthousand. Never had a problem with either one.
For now, I plan to run PFS3 on a spare drive in my AmigaOne for backup purposes, while I evaluate FFS2 on the main drive.
(Oh. . . and no, I am not a beta tester, and don't have OS4 yet. I'm just talking about what I'll do once OS4 arrives. I'm stuck with Linux for now.)
Paul
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I've used PFS back from days it was still a hobby project called PFS. It later changed into AFS, then back to PFS2 and finally PFS3.
I turned to AFS only when the ffs2afs tool was made available, and I could convert all remaining ffs filesystems to AFS.
I now use PFS3 on my Pegasos.
PFS/AFS/PFS2/PFS3 has never caused any problems or data loss.
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Good old AFS for me. 100% trustworthy....
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all this is based on luck it seems ;(.
and the docs in pfs3 is wrong if you have an Idecontroller or scsi controller not mentioned in the pfs docs etc.
anyway i will only say this "when it crash" make sure you have an full backup as it wil hurt like hell.
piru:u forgot to mention AFS-2 :D in the ist.
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@lempkee
I'm still use PFS3 18.5 (the last update) and it works great without any crash.
The only one i have had, was due my fault (reseating Zorro cards with power ON . . .shame!!!).
The partition was corrupted, so i've done a QUICK pfsformat and then with PFSDoctor 1.6, an Undo Format.
All the data come back without any file lost :-)
Obviously, after this "esotheric" operation, PFS (and me too) suggest you to backup the partition, make a Full Format and copy it back again.
Can you do so with another FS?
Anyway, SFS is a great FS too. (use the stablest version)
Ciao
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Yes.... which one is the better? And why? I may need to know!
Regards,
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Id say SFS is the better of the two since pfs wastes so much space on the hd, (10 megs for every 100 alocated as i recall). Also sfs seems to slow to a snails pace when a partition has lots of small files (like a browser cache). SFS however is still developed, if a little slowly ;)
Personaly i havent found the need to move from FFS(and yes i have triedd the alternatives), theres little to no difference speedwise on the crappy builtin ide port and my 040. Since the os39 updates, validation hasnt been an issue. the pros for FFS are 100% amiga compatable and working recovery tools(wel upto a point anyway).
The FFS setup is a little different under os35/39 which is where it gets its speed boost (bigger blocks and correct maxtrransfer setting for amiga internal ide).
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SFS does slow down on small files, but this can be lessened considerably by the good old addbuffers command. So even these journaling systems benefit considerably from a large buffer at times. A specially tailored (= optimized) disk cache would probably be better.
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No problems here by using either of them. Pretty much the same, either way you go, IMHO.
I am using the latest FFS now since I have Fast ATA 4000 controller installed, and it split my hard drive to smaller chunks (~4Gb each), so losing a partition likely won't affect me that much anymore. :-)
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That's not a very nice avatar there x56h34.
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The info given in the SFS docs in these matters is next to unexisting; check out the site instead (can't remember url, it's in the docs somewhere).
I have to object to SFS being slow reading lot's of small scattered files. Thats due to people messing with prefetch settings without knowing what they're doing. Set prefetch to minimum setting and the problem will go away. You can test different prefetch values easily by opening/closing a window with lot's of icons and do C:Avail FLUSH inbetween. However, I admit that it sucks that prefetch can't be disabled anymore. And yes, even with minimum prefetch it's slower than earlier version w/o prefetch, but not to a degree where I'd call it sluggish.
Note that there's alot of nice tools in the SFS archive, like SFSDefrag, SFSSalv, SFSConfig, etc.
I consider SFS "commercial quality", no matter the authors claims :-)
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I used to use SFS until I discovered that with a fast harddrive and properly set up buffers/blocksize per partition FFS is actually fast enough for me.
Edit:
Also, I use a lot of Linux. Only Amiga filesystem with Linux support is FFS, so nothing else is really worth it.
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Darth_X wrote:
That's not a very nice avatar there x56h34.
You've never played Creatures 2 on the C64? Its brilliant.
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I used SFS for about the 18 months before I got a PC (Uni work... I run Linux full time but still have Win98 in a VMware image to use some engineering software).
I have no complaints - it seemed faster with my SCSI setup (booting, anyway), no revalidations (which reduced my productivity signficantly with FFS), and i never had a partition corrupt itself, I cannot say the same about FFS. I tried no DC settings, maxtransfer, masks... it was just that my system was unstable (to a point I could tolerate, low memory) and would cause the HDD to become invalid.
Is PFS free now or something? If not I'd say go with SFS, it's reliability is great (for me) and the speed is good.
- Paul
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Also, I use a lot of Linux. Only Amiga filesystem with Linux support is FFS, so nothing else is really worth it.
SFS linux driver (http://march.home.staszic.waw.pl/asfs/)
It is read only, though.
There are 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 kernel adaptations of the patch. For further details ask the author Marek Szyprowski or .
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No, PFS is not free. I registered a long time ago. I was hoping it would continue to be updated but I don't think it has been touched in quite a number of years now.
The reason I asked about SFs is because SFS is another filesystem. One which I have very little to do with and with limited documentation. It sounds as though not too many people know of any differences between the two FS but that sfs may be slower. As for Linux compatibility, I'm sure there's a FFS compilation for it. Even tools for Windows users to look inside a FFS hard disk. Still, if you wanted to run Linux, wouldn't you use Linux filesystem? if you needed anthing AMIGA you could always run UAE.
Anyway, for my AMIGA, PFS is very quick and get's over the Gig problems for now. It's a shame it's hard to find now, I'm sure AMIGA users would be interested if it was available on AMINET. I hope AI (or whoever is setting the standards for AMIGA OS) make the new FFS to be as good as this FS seems to be.