SmartFileSystem V 1.279 On The Amiga Some FACTS...

[Franko]

Seeing as how certain people seem to like presenting false claims based solely on their preconceptions of SmartFileSystem for the Amiga. I thought it only fair for those interested in this amazing free file system to be presented with some actual facts about SmartFileSystem Ver 1.279 so that they can judge for themselves if it would suit their needs...

SmartFileSystem Ver 1.279 is a free alternative file system for the Amiga that boast the following features with it's "new" SF2 style partitions...

Fast De-Fragmentation Routines (Built In and 100% Transparent To The User) (No Need To De-frag)...

Block Sizes From 512 to 32768 bytes...

File Names Of Up To 127 Characters...

File lengths Of Up To Several TB...

Partition Sizes Of Up To 64TB...

Supports Notification & ExamineAll...

Option To Have A Special Directory That Can Contain Up To The Last 350 Files That You Have Deleted...

If you need to read and write single file sizes of greater than 4GB (DVD ISO images for example) then SFS Ver 1.29 is the file system for you. I have been using SFS on a daily basis myself for the past 6 years now (version 1.279 for the past 4 of those) and have never had one lost bit of data or had any form of file or HD corruption in all that time...

SmartFileSystem Ver1.279 for OS3.x/68k or a PPC version for OS4 can be downloaded from the Authors own site here...

SmartFileSystem Ver1.279

[Franko]

@ Chaoslord

I think the new author forgot to change that part of the doc when he took over writing SFS 1.277 onwards, as I use it myself and even on some PC DVDs/Cd/s with path names a lot longer than 255 bytes it works just fine...

(I know the longest path/filename that I've ever came across was 1002 bytes in length and it worked fine with SFS)...

As for the 107 Char length of file names never ran into any problems with them on WB3.5 or 3.9, Only time they cause problems are in really old programs that are "hard" coded to only read up to the old 30 char limit...

Even the Amiga DOS "copy" command in 3.5 and 3.9 can handle these long filenames

[Franko]

When I wrote software in the A4000+ days I typically reserved 1023 bytes for pathnames.   But in the old A500 days I only reserved 255 bytes.

When I disassembled DirWork 2.1 and recompiled it, the original only had a buffer to allow up to 256 chars, so based up the longest one I had ever came across (1002 chars) I played on the safe side and changed the buffer to 2048 chars (think that should be enough... ) ...

[Franko]

whats the pros cons compared to the open sourced pfs system?

If you're the picky type who thinks a few milliseconds in speed difference here and there are important then PFS3 is probably for you...

If on the other hand you won't notice a few milliseconds fly past and want to use really big HDs and huge partitions and require to be able to read and write files of greater than 4GB in size then SFS is the only way to go...

[Franko]

Only if you have a hard drive with 16384 byte sectors.

Not 16384 sectors, the docs clearly state that for a 64TB drive you need to set the sector size to 32768 ...

[Franko]

The number of sectors is an unsigned 32 bit value, so the maximum value is 2^32 - 1, which is 4294967295. Multiply that by the sector size (32768, according to you and the docs), and you get 140737488322560, which is 128TB.

But that's irrelevant because you can't set the sector size. It's fixed at 512 bytes, which limits you to 2TB.

I'm pretty sure Piru mentioned this to you before...

And just like PIRU you are 100% WRONG I'm afraid and just like Piru you can quote all the figures you want, until you try it and prove it doesn't work then no matter what both of you say, then sorry but your both completely wrong in this case...

PS: Dunno why yourself and Piru keep saying the sector size is fixed at 512 bytes... read this...

Disk Sector Sizes

Lets just say I use it, it works like the author say without fault and no offence but I'm inclined to believe the author (and my own experience with it) over folk who've never used it (and in Pirus case who "doesn't need to read the docs")...

[Franko]

Hard disk sector size is fixed by the manufacturer, file system block size can be changed to any whole number of sectors. Unfortunately the words blocks and sectors are used as synonyms in many places or even mixed up.

As I understand it, the maximum partition size of SFS calculates from the file system block size. So you are right in this regard.

Thank you Thomas...

I've said before I'm not the type to go into all the technical jargon when trying to explain something, prefer to keep it as simple as possible so anyone can understand...

Yeah... Blocks & Sectors in Amiga docs have been generally mixed up for as long as I can remember, which can often lead to some confusion...

All I'm trying to do here is point out to folk that if they need to be able to use filesizes of greater than 4GB, then there is a perfectly stable and working filesystem out there that's free for them to use and does what it is required to do...

The PFS Vs SFS reminds me of the whole VHS Vs BetaMax thing, VHS (PFS) may a have won out in the end but BetaMax (SFS) was technically superior and yet it lost...

[Franko]

No need to defrag, that is wrong. SFS has built-in defragmentation that can run in the background still allowing applications to use that disk but you must still run degragmentation from external application.

That's what the docs say but to be honest unlike FFS I've never found the need to de-frag any SFS partition as I only use them for storing large data files like DVD/ CD ISO's and such...

I use FFS for all my Amiga progs and apps as none of them need such large partitions due the their small size...

AmigaOS 3.1 allows only up to 107 characters. Some other filesystems may support up to 255 characters or even more. But in AmigaOS 3.1 you are still limited to 107 characters.

Not being one who uses much stuff written or saved on other systems I've never came across a filename that it couldn't handle (even stuff downloaded from the net) so the 107 char limit isn't a problem for me...

ExAll() support is not vital. It speeds up dir scanning but DOS can emulate ExAll() if it is missing.

Agreed...

Only up to 350 files? Are you sure? You can change limit (at least in MorphOS) up to 16384 files although I dont recommend doing so. (Using large .recycled dir fragments disk very fast.)

Never use this option (always have it switched off) and yes the docs clearly state that "up to 350 file" can be stored in this special file recovery drawer...

To be honest I don't see the point in it as it's very rare if ever I delete a file by accident or need to recover something I have deliberately deleted. Seems to be a Mac thing and something I find useless too on the Mac having to empty it's Trash all the time, waste of storage space if you ask me...

[Franko]

And why exectly is SFS better than PFS? I'd like to know, because I want to move to PFS

Well I would have thought my opening post in this thread along with some of the others would have made that clear why in my opinion SFS is better, perhaps you should re-read (or even just read them) as there is no point in me repeating them...

PS: I you wanna move to PFS then what's stopping you and why ask me when there are plenty of other threads on PFS...

[Franko]

It can be useful when coding. Sometimes when I have edited some text file I might get strange idea to check again what original was 20 revisions ago.

There is Trashcan in Amiga Workbench although I dont know anyone using it.

I always make a backup of any source code no matter how trivial it may seem at the time, as quite often parts of the code come in handy for other projects...

Trashcan on Workbench now there's a blast from the past, other than being annoying when formatting a disk and having to untick the box when formatting something, I haven't seen that thing since the late 80's...

[Franko]

Sure, I have backup in CVS/SVN repository but not something what you edited 5 minutes ago. Now if I could get an access to BlacksEditor source code I'd like to make some improvements there regarding backup feature...

Speaking of that does anyone know what happened to author and if source code could be obtained still?

Now that's the kinda thing where ReSource comes in very handy, you could just disassemble it into it's source code and modify it to have make a timed backup...

Course it would be a lot simpler if you got hold of the source code from the author...

[Franko]

I have, which is why I'm asking the question The only true advantages I can see based on your posts are the huge file sizes, huge partitions and huge drives, which are all things I don't need.

1) I don't need terabytes of hd space (I have a hard time filling up my peecee's 500 gig drive ).
2) I don't need terabyte partitions (64 terabyte, haha, right :lol:).
3) I don't terabyte files (what possible use is this?).

While those are clearly advantages when you do need them, what I want to know is this: Where is the support software? Things can go wrong. Perhaps not often, but when they do, having some support software is certainly not a luxury. What about bugs? I've read some bad things about SFS.

So, apart from what you've mentioned, why is SFS truely better than PSF? You see, if it really is better, then I'm not moving to PFS, because it's a hassle to re-setup my system

Well if it's not for you then you don't need to know anymore about it...

As for software support, where is the software support for thousands of programs that have been written for the Amiga...

Just like most things Amiga for many years I and many others have got by without software support (as far as I'm aware there has been no software support for PFS for years either until recently)...

Again I've explained my reasons for preferring SFS and you've answered those yourself in your post so really other than that there is nothing much more I can or need to say other than been using it for years now without problems or bugs...

[Franko]

I use SFS on several of my systems, none of which have hard drives approaching anything like 2TB, so it's pretty academic from over here

As I say the biggest drives I use are 1TB and I doubt I'll ever need a 2TB let alone bigger drives on my Amiga's, so like you say it's a pretty academic point to be honest...

My main & only reason for using SFS was simply because it could handle bigger than 4GB files and that is something I need...

[Franko]

Now there's irony (or is it just dumbness) nOw2 is quite happily reading this thread full of my posts and yet just minutes ago he posted in a certain other thread that he agreed all my posts would be better on a forum wide ignore list.... :roflmao:

The mentality of some folk here beggars belief... :roflmao:

[Franko]

No, perhaps it is. I'm currently using it, and want to know if there's any point in moving to PFS, which seems to be a high quality software product from what I've read.
No, not 'software support', 'support software'. I didn't write 'software support' :p You have a file system which is the main software, then you have recovery software, which is an example of support software

Again though I have no idea why your asking me about PFS as I don't use it. I used it once many years ago but it was very flakey and I caused a lot of crashes and loss of data so I've never touched it since...

As I have said constantly I have never lost one bit of data or had any problems with SFS so I have no need of "Support Software" (got it the right way round this time) so once again other than that I've written I can't give you anything more than that...