What FileSystem should I use?

[Sim085]

Hello,

From a bad experience I had with a CF card I learnt about the fact that one can use a different FileSystem when partitioning a hard disk to install Workbench (my aim is to install Workbench 3.1).

My question is; what other FileSystem can I use? From where can I get them?
Which one is the best?

I am still undecided if I'll use a CF card (2GB) or a laptop hard disk (40GB). Do not know if that makes a difference when selecting which FileSystem to use.

[daxb]

The best FS are SFS and PFS3. For both you can find many info here. More important is to have at least one backup that isn`t outdated.

[thomas]

The most popular file systems:


FastFileSystem

Performance: poor. Reading directories and seeking in large files is rather slow
Stability: average. Gets damaged rather easily, but usually is able to repair itself
Recoverability: best. Data is spread all over the partition and it has enough redundancies to recover lost blocks most of the time.
Find partitions if partition table is lost: very difficult. You need to know the begin and end of a partition to find its root block.


SmartFileSystem
http://hjohn.home.xs4all.nl/SFS/
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/SFS
http://strohmayer.org/

Performance: average. Needs a 68020 processor at least. Is faster than FFS on fast machines.
Stability: high.
Recoverability: poor. There is only one program to recover files from a damaged partition and it does not run on every machine. Usually if the file system structure is damaged, all files are lost.
Find partitions if partition table is lost: easy. Root block is at the beginning of the partition and contains partition size.


Professional File System
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/PFS3_53

Performance: best. The first boot after converting the boot partition from FFS to PFS feels amazingly fast.
Stability: high. File system cannot be damaged by a crash or reset. But changes done only a few seconds before the reset are lost. So you have to wait patiently for three or four seconds before you reset.
Recoverability: average. Programs to repair a damaged file system structure are included. A salvage program exists. However, PFS concentrates directory data in the beginning of the partition. If the directory area gets overwritten, all data is lost, although most of the partition is still intact. But the data area is useless without the directory area.
Find partitions if partition table is lost: easy. Root block is at the beginning of the partition and contains partition size.

[Bamiga2002]

Originally Posted by daxb

The best FS is PFS3.

There, fixed that for ya!

[Sim085]

Thanks to all for the answers. Thank thomas for the detailed description. Will try and use Professional File System as it sounds as the best option.

Thanks again

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by Sim085

Thanks to all for the answers. Thank thomas for the detailed description. Will try and use Professional File System as it sounds as the best option.

Thanks again

Yes, that's the best option for sure. And it has the support of people like Toni Willen and Thomas (we are building a marble statue for both) to fix any problem as it's open source, or just give support for users like you .

[Sandro]

yes the best and fast file system for a real Amiga is PFS3 by far
but for winuae is better SFS

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Sandro

but for winuae is better SFS

Why?

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by thomas

Why?

-on winuae sfs is fast as pfs3 (JIT enabled)
-you don't have the 3 seconds reset-wait bug you mentioned above
-partitions done in sfs are bigger in size, pfs3 reserve 10% of disk space
- is rock solid, my 100mb SFS workbench partion is from 2001, never had a problem,or crash ,winuae was coded to support SFS from the begining, PFS3 support was added later,not really sure when but around 2006-2007
- the proggy to recover files SFSSALV works great on winuae,I recovered some files I deleted accidentally using this

[Retrofan]

Seems very reasonable. But well, on WinUAE I don't use any filesystem at all -but when using my Cf HD's-; I just use folders on my Pc, so I don't have any size limit problem and the speed as you say is the same just with jit enabled.

[Toni Wilen]

No. There never was any kind of SFS "support" in WinUAE! (or PFS3 or anything)

It was added to list of dostypes (it is just a list, nothing more) only because SFS was always freely available, PFS3 was not until few years ago.

IMO there is no reason to use SFS with classic Amigas since PFS3 become freely available and SFS become worse after directscsi was removed.

Need to wait before reset is not bug, it is actual feature of any journaling filesystem (and similar, including NTFS and others), if last journal update is not written, you see state before last atomic write operation, if it gets written, you see new state. Never corrupted in-between state. Technically PFS3 could force flush immediately but it would lower write performance.

btw, real bug is not to have keyboard reset notification emulation enabled because PFS3 adds reset handler that forces flush if system gets reset

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

No. There never was any kind of SFS "support" in WinUAE! (or PFS3 or anything)

It was added to list of dostypes (it is just a list, nothing more) only because SFS was always freely available, PFS3 was not until few years ago.

IMO there is no reason to use SFS with classic Amigas since PFS3 become freely available and SFS become worse after directscsi was removed.

Need to wait before reset is not bug, it is actual feature of any journaling filesystem (and similar, including NTFS and others), if last journal update is not written, you see state before last atomic write operation, if it gets written, you see new state. Never corrupted in-between state. Technically PFS3 could force flush immediately but it would lower write performance.

btw, real bug is not to have keyboard reset notification emulation enabled because PFS3 adds reset handler that forces flush if system gets reset

thanks toni for the clarification
so
which is the best filesystem for use in winuae? which one uses you ?
which is the last version of SFS which supports direct scsi?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Sandro

which is the last version of SFS which supports direct scsi?

http://hjohn.home.xs4all.nl/SFS184.lha

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Sandro

which is the best filesystem for use in winuae? which one uses you ?

I will of course assume that whatever is best for any Amiga is good for WinUAE, so, PFS3. I gotta put PFS3 on my A1200, my A600 seems faster with PFS3 and it's a slower machine!

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Sandro

which is the best filesystem for use in winuae? which one uses you ?

I mainly use directory harddrives, only when there is need for config that should match real hardware config I'll use hardfiles or drives. Filesystem is PFS3AIO of course

[ajk]

Regarding PFS3AIO, is there something that uses RAM other than the hard drive buffers?

I've set it up on a 4GB hard drive and it works fine, but it uses something like 800kB of RAM, so my otherwise unexpanded A600 can barely manage to boot I only have three partitions with 30 buffers each, so if I have understood correctly, it should mean 45kB are used for those.

I haven't done any extensive testing yet, but since this is kind of on topic, are there some obvious memory requirements for PFS3 that make it unsuitable for low-end systems?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by ajk

Regarding PFS3AIO, is there something that uses RAM other than the hard drive buffers?

I've set it up on a 4GB hard drive and it works fine, but it uses something like 800kB of RAM, so my otherwise unexpanded A600 can barely manage to boot I only have three partitions with 30 buffers each, so if I have understood correctly, it should mean 45kB are used for those.

I haven't done any extensive testing yet, but since this is kind of on topic, are there some obvious memory requirements for PFS3 that make it unsuitable for low-end systems?

Boot without startup-sequence to confirm filesystem memory usage. No filesystem (with small buffers) use that much memory.