Amiga File Systems

[SHADES]

This is a good topic. I have played with AMIGA filesystems  for many years now. I always wanted to know why people use SFS over PFS3.
I went and registered PFS3 some time ago, but my originals became corrupted so now my 1200 is the only miggy that runs PFS3. It is supposed to be highly optimized in coding and it has it's own varients for drivers eg. compiled versions for 68020, 030, 040, 060 CPUs

I read a lot of posts on how good SFS was, but not a great deal of info. There is some very detailed documentation on how and why PFS3 works, it also is semi smart, as in will try not to fragment when read and writing. It also won't update file structure pointers untill it has completed writing, so it won't invalidate disks, and PFS3 is also very good at parallel tasking, or simultanius reads/writes because of a very efficent cache system.  To optimize under PFS3 (if you ever neded too) would be simply copying files from one partitian to another. The Filesystem defrags on the fly.

I was hoping to hear OS4 had bought rights to this software or it had become GPLed but alas, like so many other great programs, it has just dissapeared.

Is SFS better and how? PFS3 is a very good filesystem, I like it better than the Linux filesystem, no long validates etc.. would love to see a G3,4 port of PFS3.

Oh, and if anyone knows where I can get the binaries, would be good, I can than put it back on my 4000 with the 040 version and not the 020 one currently running

[xyth]

@SHADES:

From your description I would think that PFS3 is the better product.  I don't know for sure because I've never used it.

I've just switched to SFS (from FFS) and I love it.  For me, and I imagine many others, the key advantage of SFS is that it's free, and AFAICT still being developed.

[downix]

I'd always understood that SFS was an improved PFS3, but what do I know?

[Karlos]

So, has anybody actually had any problems with SFS, especially with OS3.5 / 3.9? Lost data or whatever?

I just changed my amiga HD and all my old tools (principally reorg) can't cope with the partitions that go beyond the 4G limit. At least it exits cleanly :-)

I am looking for a replacement filesystem and SFS looks nice. The docs warn that it's very much beta and not for general use but you folks all seem happy with it. I need to be cautious since I have a lot of work that I really cant afford to lose (although it is currently backed up).

[lempkee]

when both are set up correctly , well then they normally work ok also.... but the problem with pfs and sfs is that they both are very confusing.

i have used afs , afs2 , pfs , pfs2 , pfs3 , sfs and ffs..

afs1-2 and pfs1-2 was a bunch of crap, it worked fine till one day... and all data was lost...no way of getting it back.

pfs3 i used for 2+ years and worked fine until
i had a minor crash and i lost the rdb, i updated it (had it saved on another hdd) , but then everything went haywire (after a few weeks).

since my pfs3 stuff went bad, well i went over to sfs 1.195 (not latest) and it has worked fine, no probs at all, but its alot slower than pfs3.

also there is a few progs to repair and undelete etc on aminet and other places , but seriously i havent yet seen one that actually works.


if i was ever to choose again, then i would stick with sfs and use ffs on 1 disk (backup mirror of my system disk).


for os4 , as we all know by now . . it has its own ppc filesystem called "FFS2" , its not sfs .




downix: no , pfs3 is still active and greed is still active , though not exactly active since they havent updated pfs3 in 2 years now.



pps: to all who wants to use sfs , read the docs properly, FILESYSTEM should be SFS/00 or SFS/01 etc , not CUSTOM etc.

[Vincent]

@Karlos

I haven't had any problem with SFS at all and I haven't heard of any serious problems with it either.  There are SFS specific ReOrg/QB Tools like stuff on aminet.  Just look for SFS and you'll get all you need.

just to be on the safe side though, you could try to keep all your important stuff on a partition below the 4Gb mark and on FFS until you're really sure about SFS.  Then you can change that to SFS later on if you decide to.

That's the way I did it.  For some reason (I can't remember what) OS3.5 will only see 8Gb of my 20Gb hd, so I kept all the important stuff within that limit so I can get it back after a quick re-install if anything goes seriously wrong.

[lempkee]

vincent:i had +20gb working fine in os3.5 , works for both 3.5 and 3.9 , check your install

btw "support for larger disks?" question should be set to yes when u install os3.5 and 3.9

i know alot of people got probs here , basically because this option is only inside the 4way adapter part of the install ,so if u dont have one , then u normally press NO , but basically you should say yes and thats when u get this option.

so i hope this info will help you vincent.
(maybe i missunderstood your post..?)

cheers

[Karlos]

@Vincent,

Thanks :-) OS3.5 had no problem with this new drive's capacity. I suspect that your 64-bit filesystem support is not working properly, maybe.

Anyhow, I partitioned and formatted it from the emergency boot disk then used winuae to copy all my existing drive's tata to the new one (I only have a single IDE hard drive in my amiga and no adaptor to fit more).  It all worked fine.

As for SFS, my exisitng partition structure will allow me to experiment in relative safety. I can back up anything important before I mess around.

A bit OT, This newer drive is UDMA capable. Does anybody know if one of those SCSI->IDE bridge adapters will allow my blizzppc to do DMA transfers with it? That would be way nice :-)

[Vincent]

You didn't misunderstand my post at all :-)

I did a complete reinstall when I got the 20Gb hd, but no matter how much I fiddled with it and told it what it was it wouldn't recognise anything above 8Gb after a reset.

I remember something about the 4-way buffer (which I have, so I always press yes) and I vaguely remember something about the "support for larger disks" and I'm pretty sure I pressed yes for that too.

It works fine under OS3.9, so I won't bother doing a reinstall of 3.5 to find out, unless I really have to ;-)

Cheers for pointing that out though :-)

EDIT:  @Karlos

It only happened under OS3.5, it's fine under OS3.9 so I'm not worried about it.  As long as I can get the stuff below the 8Gb limit OS3.5 has here for emergency purposes I'm happy :-)

[duesi]

There's an Upgrade from PFS3 to PFS3.3 on Aminet
PFS3 5153.lha

And it says I have to use the Installer-script
to apply the Update... But there is no script in the archive :-(

Are there any other locations I can download it ?  

[Vincent]

After a quick Googling I found this:

PFS3 support page - You can get the archive here too (it might have the install script but it's probably the same archive that's on Aminet)

I've never used PFS3, so I can't help any further :-(

[duesi]

@Vincent
The links are dead on that page

But I have the Install-script now.. (It was in the archive !)
so forget about it

[Vincent]

duesi wrote:
@Vincent
The links are dead on that page

Ah right, I'll be more thorough the next time ;-)

But I have the Install-script now.. (It was in the archive !)

A spot of temporary blindness then? :-D

[Tenacious]

I'm probably flirting with disaster, but I still use PFS2.  The only prob I've had is with Ibrowse 2.2 and earlier.  The program would crash while updateing the Cache, after a year or so, that partition was unreadable and unrecoverable.  I run my Cache in the ramdisk now, even though 2.3 seems much more stable.

I picked up 3 A2000s recently (one with a 68030, grin) and will set these up with SFS to try it out.

@lempkee  I like to run two HDs of identical size and mirror between them.  Your idea of using FFS on some of them seems like a good idea to me. Thanks

[Framiga]

@duesi

this patch has the Install icon inside:

ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/biz/patch/PFS3_5153.lha

requires to insert the PFS3 CD and IIRC even the registration numbers.

Ciao

[Framiga]

@Tenacious

PFS2, as i already said to you in a previous post, is heavly bugged.

Install SFS if you can't buy PFS3 (patched with the last 18.5 upgrade PFS3-5153.lha).

Ciao