Which filesystem?

[Gavilan]

Hello! im about to re-build my A1200, my A3000 and my 2´s A4000 for use in video editing edition and music. Im not sure but i will definetely be using large hdd´s. Question is, which filesystem do you suggest me to use and where to download latest versions? SFS? PFS? Or stick with good old FFS? Hope to hear all your comments and suggestions

Cheers!

Sebastian

[bloodline]

Gavilan wrote:
Hello! im about to re-build my A1200, my A3000 and my 2´s A4000 for use in video editing edition and music. Im not sure but i will definetely be using large hdd´s. Question is, which filesystem do you suggest me to use and where to download latest versions? SFS? PFS? Or stick with good old FFS? Hope to hear all your comments and suggestions

Cheers!

Sebastian

Try and avoid FFS if possible.

[Doobrey]

Ditto what Bloodline said..
 If I had 10p for every time I had to sit and wait for my old FFS formatted HD to validate after a crash, I`d be £3.70 better off,( and a couple of years younger!)
 Since I moved to SFS it`s like having a new computer.

Some people have had big problems with SFS, so it might be an idea to search through this site and read up on it first.
 But personally, I haven`t had a single problem with it, I just wish I`d swapped file systems sooner.

[rayt]

You should really give SFS a try, its free and its also supported by AmigaOs4 IIRC. I use it for a few years now and never had any serious problems.

[StormLord]

By the way does SFS or PFS has any good defragment tool because FFS is stuck on the good old reorg that defrag only the first 4GB of the disk...
Also can I use any of the above file system to "see" a disk more than 4GB on my A600 with kickstart 2.05 ? or do I need kick 3.1 like NSD patch etc.. ??
Is also the above file systems compatible with Power Flyer on my A1200 with kick 3.1 and OS 3.9 ?
Thanks !:-)

[Stew]

  I love pfs3 except my GVP TRexx didn't see it on one of my 4000's.

[adolescent]

Where can you still buy PFS3?  I've had trouble with SFS on my A1200 but need it because of the long filenames.

[buzz]

I've been happy with pfs3 for a while, but recently, I started running enforcer. I got some hits on DH4: when copying some files. Decided to reformat the disk anyway, and got a ton of hits and a pfs3 error requester. Without enforcer it formats and reports no problems but with enfocer it does lots of reads in low mem. Also running its diskdocter check on the formatted disk fails with enforcer running (and throws up lots of errors)

This seems to occur on the ide scsi.device, and I've not had this problem when formatting on my cyberstorm ppc scsi.

Maybe its time for me to check out sfs.

ANy ideas what the problem could be ? Could it be bugs in scsi.device or is it PFS just breaking ?

(Running scsi.device from boing bag 2)

anyone else had similar problems.

The disk I was formatting is 40gb (one partition)

[tomekm]

well, the pfs3 and sfs seem to be close. I noticed that pfs is a bit faster with smaller cache, but it has one annoying thing: when you finish writing data, you need to wait a while for pfs to close root, otherwise if you reset machine you will loose last changes. It drives me crazy sometimes when I modify startup and want to reboot, sometimes i forget to wait and loose changes. But anyway i`m using pfs3 on system partition and sfs on work. I never had data losses or othe things. I`m using my system for 4 years without reinstalling. It lasted through 5 hard drives i upgraded, 020Fast->030/28->030/40->040/40 upgrades, OS 3.0->3.1->3.5 and finally 3.9 update and OpusMagellan installation... Still works fine and occupies only 70megs of my 4gb drive... with many many add-ons installed.

[Brian]

I sugest this: For the system partision keep FFS... yes it's slower and validation is a pain when it has to BUT in my oppinion it's safer and have better recovery tools. Just keep it small and you should be safe. For the rest use SFS, it's fast and it's free.

For seing drives larger than 4/8GB you need kick3.1 and a newer scsi.device (such as found in WB3.9) I belive.

[duesi]

I used PFS3 a long time (I think its the fastest)...Since I got a 80GB HDD for my miggy I couldn't format big Partitions (pfs or pfsds) I always got a write error message from PFS. Since then I stick with SFS and it works like a charm.  :-)

[tomekm]

Brian wrote:

"I sugest this: For the system partision keep FFS... yes it's slower and validation is a pain when it has to BUT in my oppinion it's safer and have better recovery tools. Just keep it small and you should be safe. For the rest use SFS, it's fast and it's free.

For seing drives larger than 4/8GB you need kick3.1 and a newer scsi.device (such as found in WB3.9) I belive."

Maybe you`re right, but Amiga never crashes without reason, so
if you prevent the reasons, you`ll get no crashes (in theory), so you`ll not need to repair the disk. My system is well-configured and stable. It does not crash at all. Even if it crashes, remember that both PFS and SFS have special autorepair routines. MY HARDDRIVE NEVER CRASHED BECAUSE OF GURU OR SOMEWHAT. Also DiskSalv has the option to recover data from pfs disk. But i never needed to use it.

As for seeing big drives: yes, put scsi.device v44+ to RAM and you`ll be fine. if your pfs partition exceeds 4GB, use direct-scsi pfs (pfsds). For sfs it does not matter (i recently formatted 80GB drive as one pfs partition).

[CU_AMiGA]

Hello,

When i had my 30gig HD connected to my A1200, i originally had FFS installed (from Amiga OS 3.9). I had 3 partitons, 1 was 4gig, the 2nd was 2gig, and the 3rd was 24gig. After a while i ran into some trouble, FFS saying that the HD had validation problems (mainly the 4gig and 24gig partitions). I kept getting error requestors and formatting problems. This problem was so severe, it almost pushed me to the edge. I had a well documented "mental" problem, and had to be assigned to the Wonford Mental Asylum in Exeter. I was so humiliated, i had to share a nut house with all these "nutters". I was cracked up, a broken man. But luckily (and thank God), help was on its way. The good people at Amiga.org suggested that i should ditch FFS and use SFS.

From the moment i installed it onto both partitions i have never looked back. I have never got any trouble using SFS. And now that i have got myself a new 4gig 2.5" HD, i recommended myself to use SFS over PFS3, it is that good. I thoroughly recommend anyone to use SFS instead of the sinking ship FFS. Use  SFS before you go through the terrible traumas that i had to go through. DO IT! :-)

Regards,

[Gavilan]

Cheers guys! Thanks a lot for all advices! I will take the plunge into sfs then
BIG DAY is next thursday. Im finishing University on wednesday (if everything is ok, that is, if i get a good note at my last exam  :-D  :-D  )

So i will begin the reconstruction of all my Amigas, guess i will be VERY busy this weekend...

 :-D  :-D

[CU_AMiGA]

Good luck. Setting up SFS at first is a little confusing, but well worth it. Remember, when in HD Tools, and setting the partiton settings (buffer, mask, validation, etc), after typing the data down - press enter after every one of them - or else it don't change. I had a little problem with that. :-D