PFS vs SFS

[AMC258]

I thought it best to start a new thread.

I used PFS3 since it was first available, up until a month ago or so.

I know there are bugs, but none to do with long file names.  The only *PAIN* with long file names is if you copy from one partition to another and forget to 'setfnsize' first!  Which I have done many times!

The only bugs I've actually encountered are:
- If you use 'diskvalid' to try and fix errors, it will trash the whole drive.  I had this happen several times.
- The :.deldir/ quit working for me a couple of years ago, not sure why, maybe it's disk size?  For some reason every time I access that directory, I get partition trashing and GURUs.

Otherwise, PFS3 has been great!

I switched to SFS because I'd been hearing that SFS is the way to go, and I figured I might switch to a current FS before going to OS4.  Honestly, I couldn't get anyone to tell me what was better or worse about SFS.  I discovered SFS has a cache, so, I did a side-by-side comparison.  SFS was just a hair *slower*, not enough bother me.  I had a dead RAID disk so I needed to reformat everything anyway...

I do a LOT of the things that I now hear should be hosing SFS!  I run a Un*x style compiler that should do more damage than IBrowse, and I run that too.  I have had no problems, other than I lost a few files when I converted to SFS (I assume this is because of the dead RAID disk, I was running RAID 0).

Now I'm starting to think I had better switch back to PFS, and quick. :evil: Everyone agreed?

I will give this a few hours to decide.  I can do a backup in the meanwhile.  There goes my holiday weekend...

[Framiga]

if you want to use AmigaOS4 (onto your classic) better to use SFS (once booted, you will have a native SFS version)

I'm now "forced" to switch to SFS only due AmigaOS4/MOS and AmigaOS3.x compatibility and for the "love n peace" of our beloved AOS4 developer! :-D

[weirdami]

You didn't really say why you have to go back to PFS. If SFS is working beyond what people said it would, what's the problem?

[AMC258]

Okay, sorry, I should have mentioned, this is related to thread
Previous SFS thread

 :-o Maybe I spoke too soon!  I just formatted my backup drive to get ready to back up and PFS crashed badly!

[ChrisH]

IMHO, you should stick with SFS unless you find some serious problem with it that the author cannot fix.  (With PFS you don't have that luxery - PFS is no-longer developed.)

I switched from PFS3 to SFS, and haven't looked back.  Yes, it's *slightly* slower, but it seems more stable to me & less prone to corruption (although I haven't done any scientific comparisons).

Oh, and the SFS defrag util is great.  I don't think that PFS had that feature???

[ChrisH]

BTW, your crash with PFS may be due to "wrong" Mask or MaxTransfer settings, because it is *very* sensitive to those.  (Dunno if SFS is also sensitive, because I use the same "correct" settings.)

ALSO, I recall that too few Buffers for large (GB sized) partitions could cause crashes too.  I had a rule of thumb for the number of buffers to use, if that would help?

[AMC258]

I had memory corruption, that was the problem.  It was a long time since I rebooted, and at some point I'm sure I had run completely out of memory.

PFS3 doesn't allow more than 600 buffers on any drive I've ever had.

I did write a defrag program for PFS once (really simple), but what I found was that the drive was never fragged enough to bother, and defragging wasted more time that I'd save if the drive was defragged for a while.

[avanham]

If I recall correctly, PFS automatically defrags as it saves files to the drive so there is no need to have a defrag program.

[ChrisH]

No, the author of PFS was considering writing a defrag util for PFS (which would run in the background), but he never got around to it.  Yes, PFS *minimises* the amount of fragmentation, but that is not the same thing.

SFS tries to do exactly the same thing, but as mentioned in certain cases it doesn't do as well as PFS.  But since you can defrag SFS at any time (and very quickly & safely) this isn't a major issue.

[AMC258]

SFS is now banished from my system.  Well, almost.  I have a drive that never gets written to, it's too big for PFS3 w/ OS4, and I'm too lazy to convert it to FFS.

Someday, the SFS issue with corrupting files will be resolved.  Until then, I'll stick with PFS3 which has never corrupted any of my files through normal use.

[bloodline]

With the move to SSDs, fragmentation becomes a non-issue.

[pVC]

I've always used both SFS and PFS partitions.. but SFS in serious use and PFS on temp and test partitions.

And always when I try to use PFS(3) seriously, I find a new bug...

For example in ftp-server use... pfs3 flipped completely. And then with fast machine.. deleting several dvd images at once, pfs went broken. Then I heard from other users, that you shouldn't delete many big files at once.. what kind of fs it that??

Sooo.. SFS has worked much better here.. and it feels also faster in real use IMHO.

Only bad thing in SFS is fragmenting, but you can avoid it by not downloading many big files at once etc. And remember to keep .recycled clean to avoid slowness in low space situations.

AMC258: first symptom of deleting too many big files at once was .deldir stopped working...