I have enjoyed the benefits of PFS2 (and AmiFileSafe before that) since it first came out. I experienced a partition failure some 7 years ago, I believed, because of the iBrowse cache being directed to the iBrowse home directory. I made some changes in my HD organization, outlined below, that have left me trouble free until now.
Last week, Genesis refused to get online. I got a warning, like 7 years ago, that indicated a corrupted file system. Every attempt to access that partition (the one where I store all of my applications) seems to have done more damage. Now I get "Alert: Wrong index block id". Diskvalid indicates that there are 0 files on that partition. All other partitions are still accessible.
I suppose I lost one spot on the HD that happened to contain a vital file system address or pointer. I suppose a virus could be to blame as well. My overall track record is really pretty good, though, all things considered. I will now try to find PFS3.3. It is supposed to include better recovery utilities. Knowledge of files systems (and masks and max transfer) are not my strongest suit. Experienced advice concerning these issues would be welcome.
Most of the applications were backed up on another HD. What is irreplaceable are some keyfiles, configurations, and 7 years of bookmarks in iBrowse, among other things. Listed below are some hard drive strategies I have used and will use more fanatically in the future.
Backup everything often! Small keyfiles, and complicated configuration files, often stored only with the app, could be backed to multiple places. Case in point, I think that the iBrowse keyfile is currently unavailable for any amount of money! CMIIW.
I prefer a number of partitions over one or two large ones. If one partition dies, the others may still survive. Several small, bootable partitions (about 100 Megs)are great for choosing between different system configs. I also like to organize partitions according to writing usage. Application volumes and mature system installations are not written much. Volumes like MyFiles: and Yam: are constantly having files appended to them. It seems to me that volumes that are written less often should be more reliable.
In general, 4 Gigs is a lot of hard drive for Amiga apps and files. I have 2 of these partitioned similarly and have backed parts of one to the other. This helped to save me this time. I'm going to partition them identically and be more religious about backups.
As mentioned, I like 100 meg partitions for multiple OSes and apps that are always writting new files, like YAM. Volumes for Apps:, MyFiles: and Archive:, etc are usually sized 700 Megs, the size of a CD, or a multiple of that. This provides another easy backup option. Also, a normally empty 700 Meg partition is a great place to assemble a CD image before burning.
Use the volume name WORK: with caution. Many installation scripts look for this volume by default to install everything to. If a script does not find WORK:, it will usually send requesters asking what your preferences are. You can then arrange the installation as you choose.
Most browsers write files they create or receive to their home directory by default. In the case of little jpegs, gifs, etc, from the www, the cache can grow to enormous size in a few months. Periodically clearing them out and letting them re-accumulate creates a fragmentation problem. Besides, most of these files never get re-used, they just eat up HD space. I have plenty of ram, so I cache to it. When the machine is powered off, the files go to oblivion where they belong. The performance is much better after a page loads once (the first time is only a little slower).
That's all I can think of now. I hope this is useful to other ppl.
