(Excerpts from a message dated 10-20-99, Mike Roark to Linda Proulx)

Hi Mike--

MR>That 47 byte file would take up a 32k cluster on a 1 gig fat
  >partition. Notice it only takes 512 bytes of space. I just gained
  >31k of space for something else.

    I don't know what program you were using to produce your "directory"
display, but a one-byte file under HPFS takes up at least 1 KB of disk
space (one sector for the file itself and a minimum of one sector for
its Fnode).  There is only one sector used for the Fnode, irrespective
of the size of the file, unless the Extended Attributes portion of the
Fnode takes up more room than is available in that sector.

    The "big cluster" argument is a meaningless red-herring; HPFS stands
on its own merits without such nonsense.  You have to have a very large
number of small FAT files to have the "wasted cluster space" exceed the
"unavailable" disk space used by the HPFS file system, itself.  Some
day, when you haven't anything else to do, format a partition HPFS and
FAT, in turn, and use CHKDSK to see how much more useful file space
there is in the empty FAT partition than there is in the same empty
partition formatted HPFS.  (For example: you get about 3 MB more on a
"100 MB" Iomega Zip Diskette formatted FAT than you do on one formatted
HPFS.)

    Incidentally, although HPFS is usually a better-performing file
system than FAT, there are some not-too-pathological data sets that will
perform better in a FAT partition than under HPFS--such as a relatively
few very-long sequential files.  It helps to understand what your
application set needs, when configuring your system :-).  For the
record, I use an all-HPFS system (except for the CD_ROM reader,
floppies, and my Iomega Zip drive) on my two OS/2-only systems.

MR>About the only drawback to HPFS is not being able to 
  >reliably recover deleted files. You learn quickly to make backups
  >before doing anything destructive.

    I haven't had any more trouble recovering deleted files from HPFS
than I did from FAT.  In either case, you have to make the recovery
attempt before the system has written anything else to that space.  I
use the "UnDelete" utility from the GammaTech Utilities set, but there
are other utilities that will also do the job.  Usually when I
accidentally delete a file, I can get it back because I recognize my
stupidity before anything else is written to the partition.  But you are
right!  Backups are very necessary--no matter what file system you may
be using.

    Regards,

        --Murray

___
 * MR/2 2.25 #120 * Life is tough.  It's tougher when one is stupid.

--- Maximus/2 2.02