| From: | Martin Steigerwald |
| Date: | 30 Jan 2000 at 16:11:49 |
| Subject: | Re: Re: PFS3 |
From: "Martin Steigerwald" <m.steigerwald@haage-partner.com>
Xavier Messersmith <xcaliber@xav.to> wrote on Sun, 30 Jan 2000 04:43:16 -0800 about
"[amigaOS3_5] Re: PFS3" in <yam8064.825.145524824@zy.zcc.net>:
> Then you'll note that SFS tends to not be compatible with itsself across its
> different versions, unlike PFS. :-)
There was one incompatibility between SFS 1.13 and versions after that.
After that and this is half a year or so there hasn't been a
incompatibility. But there probably will be one in the future.
> Also, SFS seems to be under a constant beta status. I wouldn't feel safe with
> SFS...
So well. AmiFileSafe (AFS) was a release product - It still did kill my
main harddisk partition after 3 months of proper work, it was one of the
very rare times were I lost the work of several weeks. PFS2/PFS3 however
proved to be stable in my experience. This just as an example that also
software without beta status can fail.
SFS didn't kill a partition at all here. I installed it on about 4 Amiga's
since months and it didn't fail on any of these. This does not mean it
cannot happen. But it still did not happen till now. And then my machine
was also used to show of AmigaOS 3.5 at the fair in Cologne. It just did
not break down being used by all the Amiga fans in these 3 days. In the
same time we lost 3 Amiga 1200 using FastFilesystem due to Voyager 3
crashes (would I have had the time these would have been installed with
SmartFilesystem or PFS anyway).
Apart from that one should always have a backup,
1) cause unless you have a completely failure-proof (maybe journalling -
i.e. a filesystem that is programmed to expect and to handle failure)
filesystem that does not rely on certain hardware and driver behaviour
(i.e. that a block is written or not written and there is nothing in
between) and that is also protected absolutely against memory overwriting
and that also has every thinkable DOS packet parameter validity checking,
*bad* software can always lead to a *complete* filesystem failure,
2) cause the hardware may fai,
3) cause neither PFS3 nor SFS is as recovery-friendly as FFS. I tried it
expecially with PFSdoctor that came with PFS3 for a Review. Well killing
the right anode block simply meant killing a directory in the root
directory that contained 250MB data with no possibility to get it back by
PFSdoctor. On FFS you would have still been able to get back some files
out of it.
Since years I have running always two harddisks in my Amiga were one
contains a backup of the other. Once a Fujitsu drive failed completely. It
was the backup drive and I could continue as if nothing has happened and
get a new harddisk. Without having that backup works of years would have
been lost.
Amigas are usually install once and use it forever systems (at least I
handle it this way, my current work system I installed 5 years ago or so I
don't even remember... I never lost it). In that time I have put soo much
valuable content on the harddisk that I never want to loose it. And
fortunately I now also can backup it to CD-Rs from time to time.
So do not take it as a recommendation against PFS. PFS is a good piece of
software since PFS2/3. I just wanted to tell people that SFS may also be a
good choice. Everyone may decide himself.
Please email me personally only if really necessary, use
"AmigaOS-Support: ..." or "AOS-Support: ..." as subject.
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