Ingo Juergensmann wrote:
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 09:15:57AM -0500, Michael Sinz wrote:
[...]
That is not to say that we should not look at the fact that there
are hot zones in where writing happens. The fact that there are
hot zones (multiple) means that there is more seeking going on than
you might want (albeit it may be needed). (And each seek does
cause some mechanical wear and poses potential mechanical failure)
For me as a user it's something like this:
I don't bother about the filesystem internals as long as I can get my data
back in some way. I know that each filesystem can and certainly will fail
at some time.
I made this experiences with Amiga OFS and FFS, with Amiga AFS (now SFS),
FAT, NTFS, ext2/ext3 and XFS (both Irix and x86).
Ahh, the Amiga FFS - it would not scale to very large disks very
well (bitmap rather than extents is a major limiting factor)
but it did have a lot going for it. (so says an ex-Amiga OS Systems
Engineer/Architect - we are talking 10 years ago here...)
[...]
To make it short:
A good file system is not the fastest one or the newest one, but the one
that gives me my data back after an error happened - errors will happen for
sure! Regardless of FS errors or hardware errors on disk. So, the FS tools
are somewhat more important than the FS itself.
For me XFS and Amiga FFS are the most robust file systems I came across over
the years... :-)
Yes, high reliability and recoverability are key aspects of filesystem
design (well, good filesystem design... Don't look at FAT as a good
design)
However, that does not mean you should not look at issues that can cause
performance hits or long-term hardware wear. They may be non-solveable
but the point is not to just ignore them. If you can get both the
high quality and high performance, so much the better. (And I think
that XFS does provide a very good balance in this respect...)
--
Michael Sinz -- Director, Systems Engineering -- Worldgate Communications
A master's secrets are only as good as
the master's ability to explain them to others.
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