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file me away: v43 filesystem (p)review

Important Notice

Please bear in mind that this filesystem is still experimental. The filesystem is only available through the Amiga International FTP site. However, the site is not allowing anonymous access, and hence tracking down a copy is very hard. Thank you to my contact who mailed me the archive :-)

You must remember, that this filesystem has no warranties. No-one will take responsibility for any damage caused to your computer using the new filesystem. I do not advocate installing the new filesystem (at least, not until it's out of beta), and must remind you that if you do find the archive, that it's labelled EXPERTS ONLY. In big fat marker pen. So there.

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The computing industry seems to be runnng in to it's own shortsightedness these days. We Amiga users have been more fortunate than those running PeeCees - it seems everything now kludges over the archaic design of the PC-AT: the 640k conventional mem limit, the 540 MB partition limit, and now the Y2K problem.

On the Amiga, the only memory problems we have are have are running out of chip mem, but get a gfx card, as you really should if you can afford it, and that's solved. And we've got a massive 4 digit clock date field. Will I be there when my Amiga fails in 9999?

But, it seems there is one problem that we never thought about. It wasn't really that serious a problem, I mean, in the good old days, if you had a hard drive, it was 20 megs max. But slowly and surely, as hard drives prices have fallen and storage capacities have gone up, we've met our Waterloo: the 4.3 gig partition limit.

4.3 gigs? I hear you cry? Yeah, like I'm going to need a 4.3 gig partition. Well, what about that 80 meg hard drive that you thought was gargantuan? Uh-huh.

Well, the advantage of having an owner at last is that development on the OS can continue. While people speculate madly on OS4.0, and even on the stopgap v3.5, Amiga Inc., have snuck on to their FTP site a new filesystem.

To put it mildly, the 4.3 gig limit has been blown out of the water, and support for ATAPI drives is also in. I put it to the test, risking buffered IDE interface and harddrive to try it out.

Partitions:

Okay, so you want to know the new limit on hard drive partitions so that if you go out and buy a 9 gig Micropolis you won't regret it? Well, take a guess. 5 gigs? 6 gigs? 8.1 gigs? You're not going to get it, unless you're reading this for the second time. Well, maestro, drumroll please, because the new limit is ONE TERABYTE!!!