hardfile speed problem

[YoJoe!]

I seem to recall that caching writes is a settable option on both SFS and PFS. Perhaps it defaults to ON in PFS and that is why it is giving you faster times?

I think write caching defaults to OFF in SFS.

There are also many diskcaching programs for the Amiga that speed up goold old FFS by implementing a write cache.

Write cache = that delayed writing behavior you noticed.

[YoJoe!]

Why are you using PFS2 instead of PFS3?

[Ed Cruse]

Originally Posted by YoJoe!

I seem to recall that caching writes is a settable option on both SFS and PFS. Perhaps it defaults to ON in PFS and that is why it is giving you faster times?

I think write caching defaults to OFF in SFS.

There are also many diskcaching programs for the Amiga that speed up goold old FFS by implementing a write cache.

Write cache = that delayed writing behavior you noticed.

I don't believe PFS has a write cache, I remember in the directions they had a pretty big discussion on using the Amiga cache and how big it should be, but they only mentioned caching the directory. I have noticed with small writes though there does appears to be a write delay, so it might have write caching. For big writes or a lot of small writes it gets flushed out pretty quickly, so I doubt it has much affect when writing 30 megs worth of files, like my work: partition.

Most of the writes after the two second delay at the end, if not all, are updating the directory. If you copy a bunch of files and then reboot the computer before it updates, all the files that were copied are lost, been there done that. Also I've done through-put speed measurement with PFS and FFS, they both are about the same, it's really just the file handling that's faster with PFS, updating the directory at the end for all the files copied is much more efficient.

With SFS I believe there is a write cache, seems like they specifically say don't use other programs that do that.

As to why I don't use PFS3 I didn't know it existed and PFS2 works fine for me. Are they still in business, or can I get it for free on Aminet? I guess I'll just go and see for myself.

[YoJoe!]

2 more threads I found about PFS
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32347
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=361411

[Ed Cruse]

Originally Posted by YoJoe!

2 more threads I found about PFS
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32347
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=361411

That's pretty much what I discovered, Software Hut doesn't have PFS3 and they said they hadn't heard from Greed for quite awhile. In the second thread they mentioned a cache on the partition, that's the delete file space, PFS2 has that also, it's saved me two times in the last 10 years. I backup frequently so I don't need things like that very often.

In the second thread it was said that PFS3 isn't much faster then SFS and may not be a big deal with WinUAE, being that PFS2 is a little faster then SFS then it's probably safe to say that PFS2 is just as fast as PFS3. Now is probably a good time for me to duck. It looks to me like most of the advantages of PFS3 are it's added enhancements. Since I backup a lot things like that don't usually interested me a lot. So I think I'll stick with PFS2 unless I happen to stumble on PFS3, I would like to try it.