PFS vs SFS vs FFS - Best Filesystem

[idrougge]

I've run SFS since 1999 and PFS since last year (I have several Amigas) and wouldn't change back to FFS any day. No file system is a replacement for backups — what files I have lost, I have lost to unreliable media.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

On my A4000 i have always used PFS2 and PFS3 used PFS also for floppies DD/HD (AF0) that were super fast compared to floppies OFS and FFS. With PFS I've never lost a data, and thanks to .deldir (set on Dopus4) i recovered the deleted files.

The only negative thing about PFS is the truncated files, when a copying was interrupted for a crash or or did not expect the right time for copying. Another problem was the corruption of the Filesystem which was automatically corrected thanks to a utility (Valid, if i remember correctly) that was at the top of the startup-sequence

On WinUAE since many years use SFS on mine HardFile it is also here I have never lost or invalidated a Hardfile (i have no experience of SFS su HardDisk Real).

[wawa]

i must align with thomas and toni. i have experienced sfs as completely unreliable in a long run. even though i have got sfssalv and partition magic or whatever it was called on os4 to run it was to alike effect, namely nothing or yet more mess. never again.

[Foebane]

I wanted to leave FFS because I hate the 30-char filename limit, but some people warned me off of it because the utilities wouldn't work with anything other than FFS, but I would still like to go to PFS, but it seems like a ridiculous minefield of file formats on Amiga, I had no idea how bad it was.

[ShK]

When I did Apollo core testing daily a few years, pfs3aio is only filesystem which survived of this strain. I have one original CF with pfs3aio, which is still working 100% after 3y of nasty power cycles and crashes. FFS gave up first on this kind of usage.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I wanted to leave FFS because I hate the 30-char filename limit, but some people warned me off of it because the utilities wouldn't work with anything other than FFS, but I would still like to go to PFS, but it seems like a ridiculous minefield of file formats on Amiga, I had no idea how bad it was.

Old disk repairing tools like ABTools (my absolutely favourite for fixing FFS), DiskSalv, QBTools, etc, don't work with anything than FFS and also limit the partition/disk space to 2/4GB. If you want to use bigger drives, then the argument isn't valid anymore.

With my couple decades daily experience with these newer filesystems and decade before that with FFS, I would say that the situation sounds worse than it really is. If you take care of few basic things and don't stress the filesystem too much, it's pretty rare that you end up with filesystem errors or data loss.

First, check your partition start and end points before taking them in use after creating them in HDToolbox. Some version(s) of HDToolbox created overlapping partitions, which is especially bad for SFS/PFS when that overlapping area gets written.

Second, avoid rebooting or turning off the machine by all means if there's ongoing write process. Remember to watch HD led or install some software HD led on your OS. SFS/PFS have better tolerance for this, but still better to avoid.

Third, if you have crashed programs in the system, avoid writing to HD at that point. Do only absolute necessary data saving and reboot as soon as you can. If some program has trashed the memory, you never know where it affects, it's possible that it has trashed the filesystem related memory too. I also wouldn't recommend to make uptime records on a system without memory protection like we have. I have tried and I'm pretty sure that's why I messed my system once when my IBrowse cache got written all over the files everywhere

FFS is actually the filesystem which needs repairing most, because it's quite fragile for writing interrupts (reboots, crashes, etc while writing). It was quite regular when you had to wait for drive to validate itself or use some of the mentioned repairing tools to fix checksum errors etc. Usually you can fix it though, but it's still annoying.

With PFS3 I had few annoying issues, basically it worked pretty fine, but with one HD it broke every now and then. It probably was HD's fault, because it was old and noisy SCSI HD, a bit suspicious drive... anyway I had to fix it constantly with the DiskValid program, but it got fixed nevertheless. For other HDs it worked otherwise fine, but I found a reproduceable way to totally mess it up (by just trying to rename a write protected file over ftp), and that's why I lost my trust to it and switched to SFS. It was a rare case and I guess I'd kept using it if I wouldn't have run an FTP server 24/7 on my Amiga

The IBrowse cache accident happened with SFS, but I'm not sure if the filesystem can be blamed. I'm guessing it was more about IBrowse or other programs messing up the memory and that couldn't be avoided by any filesystem. I sticked for a long time with SFS 1.84, which was the latest from the original developer and newer ones were said to be buggy back then. It lasted fine for years without bigger problems. I had some 100GB drive for FTP with it and never got any problem with that. For my Workbench/Work partitions I got couple of unrecovable errors with SFS, and I had to backup and reformat the drive, but didn't lose much (practically any) data with it. Only one broken file when those errors happened.

Nowadays I have the latest SFS on my gaming A1200s, and SFS on my MorphOS machines since 2004, and nowadays also a data partition with the current MorphOS version of PFS, and they all have worked just fine. I do occasional checks with SFSCheck, but it's always fine.

So, my conclusion is that if you take care of your filesystems and avoid certain things, it's only very rare or unusual occasions when you get them broken. I wouldn't be frightened to use the newer filesystems, they have some very appealing features anyway (speed, filenames, .recycled/.deldir, support for big drives, etc).

But in any case, always make backups of important data

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by jPV

I sticked for a long time with SFS 1.84, which was the latest from the original developer and newer ones were said to be buggy back then.

Hmm... My version says 1.58.
If newer versions are buggy this can explain the difference between the experiences we've had.

[idrougge]

I used 1.58 for the longest time.

[malko]

Searching for something else related to PFS3, I found this in the FAQ of PFS3 (had forgotten about it ).
Look at the last §.
Mark Harden, your attitude is

What is SFS ?

SFS, or Smart File System, is another filesystem being developed for the
Amiga by John Hendrikx.  It is currently at its 13th beta release. Visit
the SFS web-site for more details.

PFS-2 is faster and more reliable than SFS at the moment.  Things could
change. Competition is healthy !  We should support anybody developing
software for the Amiga.

[daxb]

You need to know that the doc (1999) is 19 years old and 8 years behind SFS development (2007). So maybe things have changed.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by malko

Things could
change. Competition is healthy ! We should support anybody developing
software for the Amiga

100% agree! It only makes things better.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Hmm... My version says 1.58.
If newer versions are buggy this can explain the difference between the experiences we've had.

I've been using it for many years SFS v1.277 (2007) I've never had a single problem on my HardFiles (not tested on Real AMiGA, where I think I can change something)

[n9yty]

Does the improved FFS in 3.1.4 change anyone's opinion? Getting back into this, wanting to reload my systems from a blank CF card and wondering which way to go.

[Toni Wilen]

It depends.. It is much safer option with >4G drives (than previous FFS versions, especially if you aren't sure system is >4G capable without testing and suddenly losing data..), fixes some bugs but it does not fix (and wasn't meant to fix) any "features" originally inherited from OFS/Tripos.

"Fixing" FFS would require major internal and on disk structure changes which would make it completely new filesystem with pointless FFS backwards compatibility.

[AC/DC HACKER!]

Huuuuuuh... I've been able to use the SFSSalv without problems several times. It's not nearly as sweet as DiskSalv or Ami-Back Tools but it has always located and recovered exactly what it should for me. Rarely has SFS crashed for me, but there have been those moments when, I too, reset before I should..make sure all disk activity is stopped.

I was recently wondering about the Filesystem updates.. I''ll check FPS soon..seems pretty cool. For now, though, on my 32GB CF FFS for System partition and the rest SFS.. I keep pretty good backups, so for the most part nothing is lost. I'm also still playing with 3.1.4's FFS update with another CF.

Glad to see this thread.

[paul1981]

jPV gives some good advice there.

I've been using SFS on my A1200/060 for many years without issue. I actually moved over to SFS when I purchased Audio Evolution (multi-track audio recording software) as SFS seeks the huge audio tracks immediately, whereas FFS gave a substantial delay (can be seconds) before the audio starts when you hit play or record.

I'll have to check what version of SFS I am running. I seem to remember applying a file system update a few years ago.

Edit:

"SmartFilesystem 1.279 (18/07/02)
(c) Joerg Strohmayer"

Well, I say If it ain't broke...don't fix it.

[amiwolf]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It depends.. It is much safer option with >4G drives (than previous FFS versions, especially if you aren't sure system is >4G capable without testing and suddenly losing data..), fixes some bugs but it does not fix (and wasn't meant to fix) any "features" originally inherited from OFS/Tripos.

"Fixing" FFS would require major internal and on disk structure changes which would make it completely new filesystem with pointless FFS backwards compatibility.

AmigaOS 3.1.4' s multi-threaded FFS 46.13 claims to be more multi-tasking friendly. How difficult would it be to add the same capability to PFS?

[BastyCDGS]

While it's nice to hear about the classic Amiga filesystems, I would be really interested how it's about using filesystems like NTFS/ext2-4/btrfs/zfs/xfs and alike.

Is there any filesystem support other can the most common ones?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by amiwolf

AmigaOS 3.1.4' s multi-threaded FFS 46.13 claims to be more multi-tasking friendly. How difficult would it be to add the same capability to PFS?

I'd like to have some real world proof that makes it worth the trouble..

It is very useful (almost required) when using very slow media like floppies or CDROMs but I am not sure if it makes any noticeably difference when used with harddrives.

EDIT: AFAIK OFS/FFS has always been multi-tasking friendly (disk operations don't stall packets that don't need to access the disk)

[BastyCDGS]

Just a question:
How hard it would be to add TRIM support to Amiga SCSI/IDE drivers and filesystems? For stuff like SSDs and SD cards?

For those not familar with this topic:
TRIM marks blocks as free to use for wear leveling algorithms. SSDs and SD cards distribute the real block evenly across device's space.

It also would have the advantage, that unused blocks could be cleared on hardfiles (improving compression rate when creating backups of the image with compression).