Replacement File System PFS3 or other?

[Hybrid]

Im looking to replace FFS on my A1200 and A4000D with something more up to date. Been reading about Professional File System 3 (PFS3) and sounds quite promising.

What are your real world experiences with file systems and which comes most recommended?

Also if PFS3 is the one to go for, where can I buy it?

Regards

Hybrid

[AmiDude]

@Hybrid

You don't have to buy it. You can download it for
free from Aminet:

PFS

 :pint:

EDIT:

Ooops...this is PFS95 instead of PFS3. :crazy:
I guess I've had to much to drink tonight.
Oh well...one more for the road then...

 :pint:

[SamuraiCrow]

A better bet might be Smart Filesystem.  It has been ported to AmigaOS 4 on the PowerPC so it will be easier to move up in the future if you use SFS.

[Hybrid]

SamuraiCrow wrote:
A better bet might be Smart Filesystem.  It has been ported to AmigaOS 4 on the PowerPC so it will be easier to move up in the future if you use SFS.

Thanks, Ill take a look at that.

Hybrid

[Piru]

I have better experiences with PFS3 than SFS. YMMV.

[itix]

On 68k PFS has better compatibility with old software. SFS/68k no longer works with some disk utils (i.e. Diavolo Backup).

[buzz]

And I have the opposite. I have better experiences with sfs than pfs3. Having a partition with pfs3 turn NDOS on a few occasions. Also, with a large disk (120gb) on scsi.device and pfs3, I got plenty of enforcer hits.

[InTheSand]

I'll also happily recommend SFS... Have had no problems with it on my A3K with an old clunky 10Gb drive!

 - Ali

[ravnen]

Maybe a dumb question, but what advantages have these other filesystems over ffs?

[InTheSand]

SFS is faster than FFS and is also able to deal with large partitions without being patched.

As far as I know, SFS is also more reliable than FFS but I've not really had any problems with either.

 - Ali

[Piru]

Both PFS3 and SFS are tons faster than FFS, PFS3 being the fastest. SFS has tendency to suck in some scenarios (say apps writing to multiple files at the same time, the SFS block allocator sucks here and gives alternate blocks one at the time generating mega-fragmented files).

When I tried SFS it exploded after copying 20GB data to freshly formatted partition. Perhaps it was somewhat unstable SFS version or something, who knows. I did't try again. To be fair, PFS3 doesn't seem to run stable for some, either. I have 320GB of data on PFS3 partitions here, and no problems.

[tonyvdb]

it seems to me that SFS handles large drives with ease FFS will not, SFS also seems to be able to handle transfusing large chunks of data where FFS usual corrupted the files if done in one large chunk.

[Framiga]

Piru wrote:
Both PFS3 and SFS are tons faster than FFS, PFS3 being the fastest. SFS has tendency to suck in some scenarios (say apps writing to multiple files at the same time, the SFS block allocator sucks here and gives alternate blocks one at the time generating mega-fragmented files).

absolutely! a 5GB partition formatted yesterday (SFS)

7/0.MOS:C> SFSCheck SFS: FRAGLIST
Partition start offset : 0x00000002:B332B800   End offset    : 0x00000004:3D5C3000
Surfaces               : 5                     Blocks/Track  : 254
Bytes/Block            : 512                   Sectors/Block : 1
Total blocks           : 12915900              Size          : 6306,5MB/5737,6MB (10%)
Device interface       : TD64                  Version       : 1.239
Device buffers         : 400                   Device caches : 32x32768 (1048576 bytes) [CPB]

Checking RootBlocks
...okay
Checking AdminSpaceContainers at block 2
...okay
Checking NodeContainers at block 7
...okay
Checking ObjectContainers at block 3
Fragmented file: SFS:IBrowse/Contents-arm.gz [10324], 4 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:IBrowse2.4-020+/IBrowse [10217], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:MOS_back/Utilities/MPlayer/TDmplayerGUI/MPlayer_1.07 [11794], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:MOS_back/Apps/Apdf/Apdf_604e.module [4458], 3 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:WookieChat2.4/Logs/_#morphos [1094], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:SAMBA/log/log.nmb [4248], 3 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/giFTMui_chat.log [993], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/Completed/Checco Zalone - Mimma amore.mp3 [12095], 3 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/Completed/Zelig Globalizzazione.mp3 [4574], 3 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/daemon/OpenFT/nodes [10327], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/daemon/shares [859], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/daemon/giftd.log [841], 4 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:AMIGIFT/Incoming/F428000A7C6B0027960C.Checco Zalone.mp3 [12119], 8 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:rdesktop-2005-02-05/RDesktop.info [12079], 2 fragments.
Fragmented file: SFS:rdesktop-2005-02-05/RDesktop [10391], 2 fragments.
...okay
Checking Bitmap at block 34 (3229 blocks, 4000 bits/bitmap)
...okay
Checking Fragmentation (11136 total file(s), 15 fragmented file(s), 44 fragment(s))
...1%

and often even big files goes fragmented in 18 fragments!

With PFS3 much, much less.

[Vulture]

PFS is slightly faster than SFS and it has a very good repairer, PFSDoctor, which has saved me in too many occassions. And keeps more deleted filed to undelete than SFS. Both are much faster and more reliable than FFS though and SFS has the advantage of being free. Both though will likely produce errors if u have to many directories with too many files in them in one partition. So be carefull with that no matter what fs you choose.