| From: | Xavier Messersmith |
| Date: | 31 Jan 2000 at 01:01:24 |
| Subject: | Re: PFS3 |
From: Xavier Messersmith <xcaliber@xav.to>
On 30-Jan-00, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Xavier Messersmith <xcaliber@xav.to> wrote:
>> 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.
Huh, I thought it was alot worse than that. My bad.
>> 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.
Naturally. Though the disclaimer that SFS may wreak havok doesn't make me
feel warm and safe either.
The people (or person?) that works on PFS3 offers to fix/retrieve the data on
a drive that went down due to the filesystem or somesuch. A nice perk.
> In the
> same time we lost 3 Amiga 1200 using FastFilesystem due to Voyager 3
> crashes.
I never understood how a program that only deals with files can devistate a
whole harddrive. I know invalidation, but its still readable and the
validation can be helped along if something goes psycho.
> Apart from that one should always have a backup,
For a good few people that isn't wholly feasable, unfourtunately.
> 1) cause unless you have a completely failure-proof (maybe journalling -
> i.e. a filesystem that is programmed to expect and to handle failure)
Like an EMP? ;-)
> 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)
Seems like a relatively safe bet to me. Although PFS uses 1K blocks (versus
the hardware 512B size)...
This is only relied on if writing is interrupted at a very specific point.
> and that is also protected absolutely against memory overwriting
MMU.library support may well be under consideration.
In general its not a standard Amiga feature though. :-)
> and that also has every thinkable DOS packet parameter validity checking,
> *bad* software can always lead to a *complete* filesystem failure,
I never understood why FS programmers allowed this.
> 2) cause the hardware may fai,
Falling satellites, etc. Yup.
> 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.
The PFS recovery tools suck. Since I wasn't able to get the latest PFSDoctor
out of the upgrade I can't speak for the newer one. (I haven't gotten any real
help with this either, pretty clear to me that the PFS people enjoy choosing
their fights)
For anything that isn't really simple I'd fall back on analyzing with
diskvalid and poking around with a block-editor.
> 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.
I've never had a Quantum go down on me (one has been spinning for a decade).
You bring a good point though, I'll go borrow a friend's CD burner next
chance. Since *EVERYTHING* I work with runs off a few partitions on a single
2G harddrive. If that breaks down, well, I have a non-Quantum drive I expect
to kick out any minute that is 1/7th the size of my main drive. Another 1/8th
down is my original 40 meg drive that thanks to the new HDToolBox I was able
to pave over with PFS. Not horribly useful for backing-up though.
> 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).
How I treat mine too. It scares me how readily some people reformat their
system partitions without backing it up.
I recall loosing my system once (interrupted reorginazation I think) that was
probably about 7 years ago though, I may have had a backup at the time as
well...
> 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.
SFS surely wins on cost-effectiveness it seems.
I'm sorry I don't know enough to say more.
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