Deleting files!

Hi!

I own an Amiga 1200 with 060 card. I havent been using my Amiga since late 90s and now I am trying to get it back on track again.

It works very well, but I do have some problems with the harddrive and deleteing files. I am using a 12gb 2,5" standard HD with buffered 4-IDEfix express adapter. It works very well with SFS. It reads and writes files nice and fast, but when it comes to deleting it takes ages before a file is deleted.

I have tried to lower maxtransfer (from 0x1fffe to 0xfffe) but that didnt help a lot! Values from Syspeed:

Create 167 (Op/s)
Open 274
Dirscan 1372
Delete 2 (it takes ages before value is displayed)
Seek/Reed 201

CreateFile 2.85 (mb/s)
Writefile 3.19
Readfile 2.95
Rawread 3.01

Any .. ideas?

[daxb]

What says SFScheck/SFSquery? Is your disk/partition full? Do you use ".recycled" directory? If yes, delete it. Maybe that help. How many DOS buffers? Other cache settings?

About your sysspeed values I guess they should be overall higher.

Thanks! Found a cure! Buffert-size was too low (about 50). I tried 1024, and I got a very nice result.

512 worked very well also.

256 is my current setting as 128 gave lower results in sysspeed..

Edit: New results from Sysspeed:

Create 209
Open 346
Dirscan 1427
Delete 143
Seek/Read 682

CreateFile 3.20
WriteFile 3.26
ReadFile 3.01
RawRead 3.02

[Photon]

Don't think you need 1234563123 buffers to fix slow deletes for a benchmark program. If so, SFS is crap (No, I know it's excellent. Don't worry.)

No trouble deleting files quickly on my DH1 with FFS, 11(!) buffers. Have you typed 'Info' in shell and is DH0: 'validating'?

Could be a SysSpeed/SFS thing? I think I need to patch that [Edit: SysSpeed] somehow to run on my Apollo 1260.

I know some people hate non-problem-solving responses (after all, there could be some problem with your mobo but I heavily doubt it), but I always recommend to everyone to replace harddisks with CF card+IDE adapter. It will cost you something like 300-400 SEK total and the benefit speed+absolute silence. 2GB Sandisk Extreme III is excellent and cheap.

[daxb]

If you have enough RAM to wast you can add 1000-5000 buffers (depands on amound of files on partition). You should compare your values with other (equal) systems to be sure that it was only a buffers issue.

Originally Posted by daxb

If you have enough RAM to wast you can add 1000-5000 buffers (depands on amound of files on partition). You should compare your values with other (equal) systems to be sure that it was only a buffers issue.

I have 64mb ram.. and where can I find such logs to compare with? I added more buffer and all 4 partitions now has 1024 .. You say I might add even more to that?

Specs:

Amiga 1200 B1260@50mhz REV 1b with 64 mb RAM.

Kick3.1 / WB3.1 2,5"

old IBM-harddrive 2,5" 4200 rpm ATA-66 connected to IDEfix Express

[thomas]

You shouldn't need more than 100 buffers for partitions less than one gb and perhaps 200 - 400 buffers for larger partitions.

Each buffer needs as much space as one file system block (Windows calls it a cluster), usually 512 or 1024 bytes. So with 5000 buffers, you might waste 5 MB of memory.

For FFS it's true, the more buffers the faster. But more than 1000 buffers are not needed for it, either.

[daxb]

About buffers using SFS I just quote from SFS mailinglist (answer is from Jörg). It should help using the right values:

> - There are a general rule to start (before playing with sfscaches,...) about
> buffers with SFS and size of the HD ???. Sure a general rule IMHO don't
> exist but a first start will be usefull for me (with 96 Mb !!!)

There is no general rule since it depends more on the number of files
than the size of the partition, for a small partition with lots of
small files you should use more buffers than for a large partition
with only few very large files. But with enough memory you should use
at least 1000 buffers for each SFS partition.

Then, after using the partition(s) as usual for a long time, not
directly after (re)booting, use SFSQuery and check the number of cache
misses it reports, if you get 2% or more cache misses you are using
too few buffers.

> (I have 1go,2go and 20 go on my HD).

For the 1GB partition start with 1000, for the 2GB partition 2000 and
the 20GB partition 5000 buffers. The buffers for all 3 partitions will
need about 3.9 MB RAM (8000*512 bytes). Unless you have very much
small files on one of the partitions that should be enough.

E.g. I`ve only 32MB RAM, hence I use 150 - 200 buffers.