Murray Lesser,

24-Oct-99 10:39:02, Murray Lesser wrote to Andy Roberts
          Subject: File Systems
 ML> (Excerpts from a message dated 10-22-99, Andy Roberts to Mike
 ML> Roark; original topic: Warp 3 Install):

 AR>> While I can think of a lot of reasons to use HPFS rather than FAT, I
 AR>> can not think of any good reason to use FAT rather than HPFS.

Ok I was wrong about that.  Very small partitions (under 80MB), removable
media such as floppies and ZIP drives, and a very few other considerations,
which probably aren't worth the hassle in most cases, do favor FAT over HPFS.

 ML> If your whole partition will contain only a few long sequential
 ML> files,

Provided those files don't exceed the DOS/FAT limited 8.3 file name.

 ML> FAT is not only faster

According to the online information "OS/2 Warp Command Reference", "File
Allocation Table (FAT): aging gracefully":
--- Excerpt ---
 > For small volumes (under 80MB), FAT might actually be faster than HPFS.
--- End Quote ---

I think that also implies the inverse that for volumes larger than 80MB, FAT
might actually be slower than HPFS.

 ML> but has more capacity.

I assume you are talking about added overhead for HPFS that is not necessary
for FAT on very small partitions, otherwise:

From the same above online reference:
--- Excerpt ---
 > FAT volumes are limited to 2GB in size.

From "OS/2 Warp Command Reference", "High Performance File System (HPFS)":
 > HPFS was optimized for use on large hard drives, and can provide
 > tremendous performance and space utilization improvements over FAT on
 > large hard drives.

 > HPFS volumes can be larger than 2GB, though if you have a large RAID
 > (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) Drive or other large hard disk, you
 > should try to keep the size of a single volume under 16GB to avoid
 > potential recovery problems.  RAID is a scheme to create an extremely
 > large drive by transparently linking together many smaller hard drives.
--- End Quote ---

 ML> I back up to Iomega Zip diskettes using the OS/2 BACKUP and RESTORE
 ML> utilities. It would make no sense whatsoever to format those diskettes
 ML> HPFS.

Granted

 ML> Choice of file system should depend on what one is going to put
 ML> into the partition, not on the "Team OS/2" conventional wisdom.  I
 ML> agree that for general use with partitions that are much larger
 ML> than 100 MB, HPFS has enough advantages over FAT to be the
 ML> preferred choice.  For partitions much smaller than 100 MB, FAT is
 ML> usually the preferred choice because it will provide both more
 ML> capacity and better performance.  (See "Performance Tuning OS/2
 ML> Warp" - a white paper for Warp 3 ISVs, written about the time Warp
 ML> 3 was released by Ron Cadina (then at IBM Boca Raton).  It is
 ML> still available as \WARPPERF\WARPPERF.ASC on disc M1 of DevCon
 ML> Release 2 vol 3.)

Humm.. I keep thinking about subscribing to DevCon, but I'm stingy. 

 ML> I keep one small (51 MB) partition on my HD as a "scratch"
 ML> partition for holding ephemera, such as the Netscape Cache and
 ML> those intermediate files built by my compilers.  It gets
 ML> reformatted by STARTUP.CMD, which is much easier than going
 ML> through periodic housecleaning cycles, thereby giving it most of
 ML> the advantages of a very-large virtual drive! However, since it is
 ML> the only small partition on my HD, I keep it formatted HPFS for
 ML> consistency's sake; the small performance and space loss isn't
 ML> important for these files, and I need no separate FAT cache.

It is the "HPFS for consistency's sake" reason, or in my words: not having to
worry about 'DOS Think' limitations, that I prefer to make everything HPFS
that does not have some other default, such as removable media.

 ML> But I would never attempt to format any of my "removable media"
 ML> drives HPFS.  While it would be possible (in some cases), it most
 ML> certainly wouldn't serve any useful purpose.

Removable media falls into a different class.  1.44MB floppies for example
are still limited to FAT, which never ceases to confound me.  Fortunately I
get a failure warning every time I forget and try to copy a long file name to
floppy.  Even more fortunate is that CDR does not have that 'DOS Think' limit,
(unless selected), although that is not HPFS it is not FAT either.  As far as
ZIP drives are concerned (I don't have 1), I agree it is not worth the effort
to force the default to change to HPFS, in most cases.

I'm saying you are right.  Yet I think we still agree that if given an easy
choice HPFS is the way to go.

     Thanks and Good Luck,        Andy Roberts
                                  andy@shentel.net
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