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Tom's Hardware Looks At WinFS
Alizarin Erythrosin writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has an article about the new WinFS file system. The article talks first about some of the problems and advantages with FAT[16|32] and NTFS, then talks briefly about WinFS. Here is the summary: 'Microsoft is breaking new ground with Longhorn, successor to XP. The upcoming WinFS file system will be the first to be context-dependent, and promises to make long search times and wasted memory a thing of the past. Today, THG compares it to FAT and NTFS.' Personally, I still have reservations about using a relational database to keep track of files. Unless they can keep the overhead to a minimum, I can't see it being as efficient as a file system should be."
This article is tripe.
The closest it gets to examining the (possible!) new Windows filesystem is calling it a relational database, and going on for a bit about how paths (ie: directory structures) will be irrelevant. Oh, and yeah, the closest thing he found to the implementation was called "winfs.exe" and did nothing but produce errors.
The bulk of the article is a (poor) attempt at explaining filesystems in general, and FAT and NTFS in particular. However, it gets a number of things wrong and - at best - garbles a lot of things. If you already know what he's trying to say, you *may* be able to pick out truths, but if you don't you'll walk away with misinformation.
I would suggest instead perusing arstechnica.com and aceshardware.com. I don't know if they've done any filesystem stuff, but if they have it'll be of reasonable quality.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
1) NT4 (certainly from SP3) allows you to make partition alterations without a reboot. Even 2K requires a reboot for alterations to the boot partition, however.
2) 2K doesn't dispense with the drive letter concept, despite the implication in the article that this is the case. That you can mount partitions under folders doesn't change this.
3) You can specify the cluster size when formatting a drive under NT4.
Also, has anyone actually come across a data centre that is making use of multi-hundred-TB NTFS volumes?
And, will Longhorn finally do away with the whole drive letter concept?
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Yeah, but I bet you it'll be like Windows XP's theoretical ability to use FAT 32 - it can read it, but it won't actually let you format in FAT32 when doing an installation
So when is the last time you actually used WindowsXP? What you said is pretty silly.
You can install WindowsXP on FAT32, even create FAT32 partitions during setup etc, all the same options you get with NTFS during the install.
Are you trying to make up stuff or just never used it?
Geeshâ¦
From what I've read and experienced, the performance hit only involves writes. Reads are unaffected.
Writes are about 10% less efficient, which a pretty good tradeoff for that peace of mind.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
The limit is 32GBs.
FAT32 Formatting in Setup is an option, but is known to frequently fail or have significant errors
No it doesn't.
FAT 32 Formatting once you are in the OS requires 3rd Party wares.
Again, only if creating partitions bigger than 32GBs.
The sysinternals driver is NOT a reverse engineering, it is basically a DOS mode interface to the windows system dll's. When you use the NTFSDOS disk you have to run it under the version of windows for which you will be accessing the NTFS partition, it then snarfs up the system dll's and puts them on the disk. Then when you load up the disk you run ntfsdos.exe which is basically a wrapper around that code. This could probably be done for linux but it would probably not be redistributable for fear of legal reprecussions from MS (how sysinternals gets away with it I do not know, maybe they have an agreement with MS, or maybe they are just too small of fish and too usefull for MS to swat them)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Plenty of filesystems are out there that do ACLs. FreeBSD's UFS2 does, I'm pretty sure SGI's XFS and IBM's JFS do also.
I think you miss the point of WinFS. It is actually a layer abover NTFS, so the actual files will still be stored the same way they are presently (and NTFS is pretty good about reliability). NTFS is already a lot like ReiserFS even without WinFS.
What WinFS adds is more powerful indexing, not a new storage system. Whenever you add or modify a file, WinFS adds the file's attributes to its indexes. The attributes stored are customizable, and vary depending on file type (MP3s have their ID3 info indexed, etc.). For example: somerwhere on my 120 GB disk I have a file named "code.txt" but it will take 10 minutes to find it by scanning the directory structure. Instead, I do a "SELECT Path FROM Files WHERE Filename='code.txt'" and WinFS comes up with the answer right away. If I have full text indexing, I could search for a specific phrase. Even more useful, you don't have to make playlists anymore. Just put all of your MP3s in the same directory, and when you want to hear all of your Bon Jovi, just perform the appropriate query. (Obviously you don't have to know SQL to make this useful.)
Some of this is already present in a more limited form in Unix. For example, I still can't figure out why Windows doesn't have something like the LOCATE database that is set up by default on my FreeBSD box. But WinFS will blow LOCATE away (update is real time, not daily, and it has much more than just the file name).
However, from what I've heard, so far it is a bit of a dog performance-wise. I hope it gets up to speed by ship time... At least it can be turned off if you can't take the perf hit.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
It should be noted that the regular fsck should still be performed, even on a journaling filesystem. The fsck after an unclean shutdown is obsoleted by the journal, but the regular fsck is supposed to catch subtle errors in the filesystem code and hardware problems which can cause the filesystem structure to rot slowly - problems which a journal can't and won't fix.
I'm posting this from a WinXP machine. Let me assure you that while it can read FAT32, the OS as default will not FAT32 format any drive over (I belive) 2Gb.
w to /gettingstarted/guide/installnew.asp
/?
/N:sectors] /FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS).
FAT32 Formatting in Setup is an option, but is known to frequently fail or have significant errors.
FAT 32 Formatting once you are in the OS requires 3rd Party wares.
SCO has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
I hate to rain on your parade, but the information you are providing you are either mixing with NT4 information or just making it up as you go.
Nothing I can say is convincing you, so let me reference you to the information you need.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/ho
It clearly provides information on the only limitations of doing a FAT32 installation of WindowsXP, and that is the inherent limitation of FAT32 only being able to recognize a 32GB partition size.
As for '(I belive)2Gb', you are referring to the FAT16 installation of NT4. It doesn't apply to WindowsXP.
FAT 32 Formatting once you are in the OS requires 3rd Party wares.
Here let me quote from a command prompt for your edificationâ¦
Format
Formats a disk for use with Windows XP.
FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q]
FORMAT volume [/Q]
volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name.
Notice the last line?
So where do you get your information, tooth-fairy, or just make it up as you go? Third party utilities are NOT needed to format FAT32 in WindowsXP, as you said âonce you are in the OSâ(TM) â" BTW, did you know that even during Setup â" YOU ARE âIN THE OSâ(TM)? It is running a stub version of NT already at that point; you are already in the NT OS.
FAT32 Formatting in Setup is an option, but is known to frequently fail or have significant errors.
Since when? Where do you document this at? Funny in all the time our tech team has put into working with WindowsNT, they can find no reference to this, either online or in their own experience. Tooth-fairy again or just making it up as you go?
There are NO known issues or documented issues of WindowsNT EVER having a problem running on a FAT partition, either FAT16 from NT4 days or FAT32 of current days. The NT core has an installable File System, like most modern OSes, and its interaction with the file system underneath is irrelevant to how it operates in regard to failure or problems.
Besides, this is really a moot point. If you are running WindowsXP and it is your only OS, then there is NO reason not to use NTFS. It is faster with larger files, faster with large volumes, supports compression, supports encryption and can have partitions up to 16 exabytes in size.
If you are running WindowsXP on FAT32, you are missing half the benefits of WindowsXP and the security of NTFS as well as its reliability of sitting on a journalled file system, etc, etc.
Geesh.
I think you are confusing the terms. Or you just got the threads mixed up.
Journalling makes sure that the state of data, or meta-data is always defined. So even if you turn the computer off while in the middle of a write command the file-system will be in a correct state afterwards. (The write operation will be lost however.) It is basically a way of making HDD operations atomic. Either they succeed or they fail, the in between state is what puts your drive in a corrupted state.
When talking about 10% it is refering to space on the disk for the log file to make this possible.
Now storing the meta data in a database, which is essentially what WinFS and such are doing, is not as clear a benfit. Personally I can imagine that it would be a very practiacal FS for keeping movies and MP3's on. I don't really see the benefits of running the OS files on that FS though. A lot of unneccesary overhead. (I don't search for files in my OS partition very often.)
Take a look at www.namesys.com/v4/reiser4_the_atomic_fs.html
and at www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html.
We will be adding support for semi-structured data querying in the next major release, assuming that we find funding for it. The semantics for it are described at www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html, which also explains why I don't think the relational model is effective for semi-structured data stores such as a general purpose filesystem is normally used for.
Best,
Hans