04 Jul 15 21:42, you wrote to Sean Dennis:

 SD>>> I'd recommend using JFS for any drive larger than 64GB...which is
 SD>>> HPFS' limit.

 EV>> Thanks for the 'heads up'.
 EV>> Now to look up JFS, Thanks!

generally speaking, modern operating systems use IFSes... Installable File
Systems... that means that FAT, HPFS, NTFS, JFS and numerous others may be
added to a system and used on a drive or partition...

FAT is "File Allocation Table" and comes in three flavours that i
know of... originally FAT12 (12bit) was used and based on modified QDOS
file storage format...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT12  then came the
more commonly known FAT16 (16bit) which initially increased the number of
clusters to 65524 which is almost the maximum size of an unsigned integer
(0 to 65535)... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT16 
after that, FAT32 came out with DOS 7.1 and win95osr2... it brought 32bit
cluster values which, again, increased available storage size
capabilities... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32

HPFS is "High Performance File System"... it uses B+ Trees to
store the locations of the parts of a file instead of a simple allocation
table... B-Trees and their derivatives are quite fast at finding data
stored on them... basically, visualize these trees as exactly that... a
tree with branches... a piece of data, k, is stored on a leaf some where in
the tree... when looking for k, we start at the root and decide if we take
the left branch or the right branch to get to the next node... at that
node, we again decide if we take the left branch or the right branch to get
to the next node... eventually we end up at the leaf that contain the data
k which we are looking for...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_File_System

NTFS is "New Technology File System" and is a modified version of
HPFS... NTFS came about after IBM and microsoft split up during the
development of OS/2... NTFS brought additional enhancements using advanced
data structures and offering additional capabilities like journaling,
access control lists, quotas and more... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS

JFS is "Journaling File System"... the biggest thing is that,
like NTFS, it has a journal of the operations performed... this journal is
basically a log file... if something happens, the journal can be replayed
or rewound to redo or remove transactions... this is similar to the journal
that today's modern databases use... JFS was originally introduced in 1990
with that year's release of the AIX operating system used on "heavy
iron" (aka main frames)... JFS has been around for a long time and is
now available on numerous other operating systems... OS/2 and OS/2's eCS
(eCommerce Station) being two as well as now being GPL and available for
linu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFS_%28file_system%29

there are more installable file systems available... many of them are also
journal capable because of the huge safety factor and the ability to use
the journal to recover from problems... this is akin to running checkdsk
and hoping that everything can be recovered... journaling knows what was
done and that's where a rewind can be used to back up to a known good point
and then start to move forward again...

 SD>> FWIW, Linux can also use JFS easily, so if you have an OS/2 drive
 SD>> that's JFS formatted, Linux can read it easily and I -do- believe
 SD>> that there's a JFS driver for Windows (I'll need to look that up).

 EV> I've not got around to looking up that JFS stuff yet.

 EV> Blessed are those who run around in circles because they shall be
 EV> known as wheels, I'm a BIG WHEEL here.

hahaha... remember, too, that "spinning rust", as hard drives are
lovingly know as today, is also a set of wheels going round and round ;)

)\/(ark

... Quit eating veal and cheese and duck livers you evil sick humans.
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