SFS boot partition?

[xyth]

I have just, after much transfering of files, installed SFS on my 4GB HD and am having one of those warm fuzzy I love my Amiga moments as I revel in the increased speed.

Can't believe I didn't do this sooner.

However, I have left FFS on my boot partition.  I would very much like to change this to SFS as well, considering all my system files are on here this should speed everything even more.

Is this wise?  Will it create any problems that I may have overlooked?  Advice would be appreciated.

Note:  I'm using a 4xEIDE interface.

[Thomas]

Which problems do you expect ? I would have changed the boot partition at first, because this gives the biggest speed gain.

Of course changing the boot partition's file system is more complicated because you'll have to boot from another medium (e.g. floppy disk).

Bye,
Thomas

[Croyzers]

Doesn't the boot partition have to be FFS for Kickstart to be able to read it? I'm pretty sure it does. Anyway, you could have a really small boot partition that contains the startup-sequence but then have your C: Fonts: an another partition. You would have to load up the drivers for SFS file-system somehow (on the FFS partition) and modify the Paths in startup-sequence to point to the new partition. Just a thought.

[zipper]

I've always had an alternative, spare boot partition - so much easier...

[Rassilon]

No the boot partition doesn't have to be FFS. As long as SFS is installed in the RDB of the HD, kickstart will  be able to read it and access the drive.

I have had an SFS boot partition for about 4 years!

Rassilon

[xyth]

@Thomas:

   >Which problems do you expect ?

It's the problems that I'm not expecting that I'm worried about



I have SFS in the RDB so recognition shouldn't be  an issue.  I'm sure it'll be fine, I just thought I'd rather be safe than sorry and get some advice first.

[Croyzers]

@Rassilon

No the boot partition doesn't have to be FFS. As long as SFS is installed in the RDB of the HD, kickstart will be able to read it and access the drive.

Oh yeah, of course! You are quite right in that respect. It must have completely slipped my mind. I think I was getting confused with the ~4 Gig limit of the boot partition. This is because the scsi.device in Kickstart is only 32 bits. DON'T, whatever you do, have a boot partition bigger than 4 Gigs. Trust me, you will regret it.  A friend of mine was very upset after leaving a batch script working overnight, found out some of his boot partition had been overwritten. (And no, it wasn't a virus). This was even using a DirectScsi patch aswell, so he must have used PFS.

[edit] I've just checked and I've got my first red & white checker! Yeeah!

[Mad-Matt]

Id never entrust such important system files to third party file systems let alone one concidered beta.  if sfs corupts ya lose the ability boot and probably even access to the system files at all.  with ffs the only inconvenience is is an extra 30 seconds boot time while ffs repairs it self.

as long as ffs is setup as os35/39 wants it to be, you wont see a much, if any speedup anyway.

[KennyR]

SFS may be beta, but its a hundred times more trustworthy than FFS. I've lost far more data in 2 years use of FFS than in 4 years of SFS.

[Thomas]

"Id never entrust such important system files"

On AmigaOS the system files are the least important files of all. Standard setup is one system partition and one application partition. All important data goes to the application partition. For the system files you have the best backup you can find: the original floppy disks or CD.

The boot partition can easily be formatted and reinstalled without loosing any application data. There are only a few programs that depend on some files that install onto the system partition (e.g. ScanQuix, Wordworth). I've done this several times.

Of course you should not blindly format your boot partition now. Make a complete backup before.

lha -e -r -a a work:workbench sys:#?

does the job.

Bye,
Thomas

[Mad-Matt]

May as well say that about all files on ya drive, ,a quick backup and it becomes irelivent if the machine gets screwed.

as for stability, ffs has never lost a thing since the os35 update and sfs and pfs have hurt alot more people then ffs ever has sicne with ffs there is alot more then just pure luck to getting ya files back.

in my own tests, sfs gets very VERY slow when the partition fills up and becomes quite slow and usless when using lots of small files for say internet file cacheing.

ffs might not be new,updated super speedy or whatever,  but its far from bad when setup properly and much more relighable .

[Dan]

KennyR wrote:
SFS may be beta, but its a hundred times more trustworthy than FFS. I've lost far more data in 2 years use of FFS than in 4 years of SFS.

How do you do it?in five years i have only had one error on my amigahd with FFS and thanks to disksalv i only lost about 40 files, non important images.

[KennyR]

How do you do it?in five years i have only had one error on my amigahd and thanks to disksalv i only lost about 40 files, non important images.

Because I have a lot of stuff that writes to the HD. If my Amiga crashed during this write, not only would I have to wait ages until the disk validated, sometimes whole directories "magically" disappeared. Also, deleting stuff by mistake sucks on FFS; you have to go on a long, long search with Disksalv, which can't run on partitions past the 4GB limit anyway. With SFS, you get backup copies of deleted files - even ones you copied over by mistake! This on its own is incredibly useful.

FFS had its day, but with hard drives pushing 200GB and applications being more demanding, it just doesn't cut it any more. I'll never go back to FFS.

[xyth]

SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD SOD
SOD SOD !!!

Well I decided to install SFS on my boot partition, and don't worry, everything went smoothly and everything is faster.  Yay!

Of course, what I did was follow an old link from another thread and have installed version 1.58 from c.1999!  I just discovered that the latest Aminet version is 1.205!  BUGGER.

So another evening is to be spent transfering and backup up files.  Oh well, it's my own fault for not doublechecking.

On the positive side, this might mean that everything is going to get even more efficient.

[Damion]

I'm with KennyR here; I would never use anything
other than PFS3/SFS...playing "russian roulette"
with FFS is no fun.