I hope Leopard offers both, but I really don't know what's wrong with HFS+ on a single drive system, and I don't see that much advantage to ZFS on a single drive notebook or desktop. If standard Leopard offers it and it is stable, then that would make the price worthwhile, it would give me failure resistance on a drive array without requiring an expensive RAID card.
It wasn't mentioned in the latest build of Leopard so I'm assuming that it's still greyed out in Disk Utility. One of the glaring problems of ZFS is that it can't be used as a boot disk. I certainly don't want to have multiple partitions on my single notebook drive. What is this, Linux?
I hope Leopard offers both, but I really don't know what's wrong with HFS+ on a single drive system,
Absolutely nothing. It is a perfectly fine file system covering the needs of most people. And, as of 10.3 Panther, with very good automatic optimization measures.
HFS+ does, however, have a performance problem with handling many small files (as opposed to few large files), which is becoming an increasing bottleneck for various reasons. (Such as cache files or Spotlight indexing files.)
Also, here's a few things that could be added:
1) transparent compression. That is, being able to choose individually for files or folders whether they should be compressed. This could even be automated based on what files are infrequently accessed.
2) transparent encryption. Same as with compression, except for the automated part. Both are currently possible non-transparently through disk images, but that's a major hassle with lots of overhead.
3) versioning / delta files. Keeping old versions of files while only taking space for changes. Would help fix Time Machine's greatest flaw.
It wasn't mentioned in the latest build of Leopard so I'm assuming that it's still greyed out in Disk Utility. One of the glaring problems of ZFS is that it can't be used as a boot disk.
I think that is a limitation of the boot loader. At least I hope so.
Quote:
I certainly don't want to have multiple partitions on my single notebook drive. What is this, Linux?
There is at least one other partition on your computer, for the boot loader. It is small and Apple hides it.
For big disks, we always create a 200 MB EFI system partition (ESP) (see ESP Explained) as the first partition on the disk.
Quote:
The EFI system partition (ESP) is a special partition from which EFI can load EFI (boot-time) device drivers. The EFI firmware in Macintosh computers fully supports the ESP, although Apple does not currently use it for anything. We create the ESP on big disks to make things easier if we ever need to use ESP-based drivers. We strongly recommend that you do the same.
Chucker, wouldn't the way zfs is constructed immensely help with Time Machine?
I don't know much about either HFS or ZFS, but from what I read about zfs, it's built in such a way as to maintain the highest possible safety standard for data, and it might make it terribly easy to say automatically backup your macbook by mirroring to a second 'partition' as soon as the macbook is docked or on the network.
While it seems to be designed for the high-end data centre, these kind of uses might simplify home backup in exactly the way Time Machine does.
I'm still confused how Apple would implement TM, it seems very un-apple-like to have a "simple" solution dependant on an external usb harddisk. Perhaps they'll tout Airport Extreme with a disk attached to that, but that seems risky. Most external disks don't like being on 24/7
Which leaves a new and improved .mac, a manual solution, a docking station or a home server solution.
Anyway, probably OT in this thread.
Active desktop seems nice, if for no other reason than it might do away between the abrupt differences between login screen, screensaver and such versus the desktop. We'll have to see if it is useful and tasteful functionality once application developers get their hands on it
I sure hope this isn't one of the "top secret features" that's been holding Leopard up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by curtegg
Change the filesystem over to ZFS. Dump out-dated HFS+
Quote:
Originally Posted by pgb0517
Waste of Apple's resources! How does this help me administer hundreds of Macs in a corporate environment? Let Apple focus on making the Active Directory plug-in and other business-related tools work flawlessly before they waste time on eye candy. And hey, how about that Leopard release date?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarcUK
exactly! ^
Its bollocks like this I dont want to read when the OS has just been delayed 6 months.
"I have a better idea! How about I calculate how much time you've just wasted?"
It puzzles me how much energy people use being positive! And how much energy they use being negative about other people being negative! And how much time they waste complaining about others' posts! Hah! So there.
It's about allocation of resources, y'all. I not stoopid. I know the Eye Candy Team doesn't give a hoot 'bout no Active Directory Plug-in Team. But Apple, just in my simple-minded opinion as a guy who makes a living managing hundreds of Macs in the workplace, needs to round out their enterprise support and fix some of the things that to this very day, even as we speak, makes Corporate CIOs disparage Apple. They could, for instance, I dunno, I'm just day-dreaming here, take resources from the Eye Candy Team and put them on the Let's Succeed in the Enterprise Team. Help people like me and my hundreds of Mac users, who don't need resource-hogging Eye Candy, get Real Work done, without my having to find little workarounds here and there so that we play nice in a corpo-rats environment.
And to me, it's not a waste of my time to point this out on rare occasions, so why should someone else care? Hey, y'all, that's why they put comments areas on news articles anyway! So we can comment! So, lighten up!
Comments
Change the filesystem over to ZFS. Dump out-dated HFS+
Yes, because Apple's graphics team obviously has significant overlap with their file system engineers!
I hope Leopard offers both, but I really don't know what's wrong with HFS+ on a single drive system, and I don't see that much advantage to ZFS on a single drive notebook or desktop. If standard Leopard offers it and it is stable, then that would make the price worthwhile, it would give me failure resistance on a drive array without requiring an expensive RAID card.
It wasn't mentioned in the latest build of Leopard so I'm assuming that it's still greyed out in Disk Utility. One of the glaring problems of ZFS is that it can't be used as a boot disk. I certainly don't want to have multiple partitions on my single notebook drive. What is this, Linux?
I hope Leopard offers both, but I really don't know what's wrong with HFS+ on a single drive system,
Absolutely nothing. It is a perfectly fine file system covering the needs of most people. And, as of 10.3 Panther, with very good automatic optimization measures.
HFS+ does, however, have a performance problem with handling many small files (as opposed to few large files), which is becoming an increasing bottleneck for various reasons. (Such as cache files or Spotlight indexing files.)
Also, here's a few things that could be added:
1) transparent compression. That is, being able to choose individually for files or folders whether they should be compressed. This could even be automated based on what files are infrequently accessed.
2) transparent encryption. Same as with compression, except for the automated part. Both are currently possible non-transparently through disk images, but that's a major hassle with lots of overhead.
3) versioning / delta files. Keeping old versions of files while only taking space for changes. Would help fix Time Machine's greatest flaw.
But none of these are very pressing issues.
It wasn't mentioned in the latest build of Leopard so I'm assuming that it's still greyed out in Disk Utility. One of the glaring problems of ZFS is that it can't be used as a boot disk.
I think that is a limitation of the boot loader. At least I hope so.
I certainly don't want to have multiple partitions on my single notebook drive. What is this, Linux?
There is at least one other partition on your computer, for the boot loader. It is small and Apple hides it.
There is at least one other partition on your computer, for the boot loader. It is small and Apple hides it.
The EFI System Partition is currently unused (and reserved for future use). The bootloader is on the firmware, not on your hard drive.
Cf. TN2166: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2006/tn2166.html
For big disks, we always create a 200 MB EFI system partition (ESP) (see ESP Explained) as the first partition on the disk.
The EFI system partition (ESP) is a special partition from which EFI can load EFI (boot-time) device drivers. The EFI firmware in Macintosh computers fully supports the ESP, although Apple does not currently use it for anything. We create the ESP on big disks to make things easier if we ever need to use ESP-based drivers. We strongly recommend that you do the same.
I don't know much about either HFS or ZFS, but from what I read about zfs, it's built in such a way as to maintain the highest possible safety standard for data, and it might make it terribly easy to say automatically backup your macbook by mirroring to a second 'partition' as soon as the macbook is docked or on the network.
While it seems to be designed for the high-end data centre, these kind of uses might simplify home backup in exactly the way Time Machine does.
I'm still confused how Apple would implement TM, it seems very un-apple-like to have a "simple" solution dependant on an external usb harddisk. Perhaps they'll tout Airport Extreme with a disk attached to that, but that seems risky. Most external disks don't like being on 24/7
Which leaves a new and improved .mac, a manual solution, a docking station or a home server solution.
Anyway, probably OT in this thread.
Active desktop seems nice, if for no other reason than it might do away between the abrupt differences between login screen, screensaver and such versus the desktop. We'll have to see if it is useful and tasteful functionality once application developers get their hands on it
Ditto! Ditto! Ditto! Ditto!
My thoughts EXACTLY
I sure hope this isn't one of the "top secret features" that's been holding Leopard up.
Change the filesystem over to ZFS. Dump out-dated HFS+
Waste of Apple's resources! How does this help me administer hundreds of Macs in a corporate environment? Let Apple focus on making the Active Directory plug-in and other business-related tools work flawlessly before they waste time on eye candy. And hey, how about that Leopard release date?
exactly! ^
Its bollocks like this I dont want to read when the OS has just been delayed 6 months.
"I have a better idea! How about I calculate how much time you've just wasted?"
Don't be like a PC!
It's about allocation of resources, y'all. I not stoopid. I know the Eye Candy Team doesn't give a hoot 'bout no Active Directory Plug-in Team. But Apple, just in my simple-minded opinion as a guy who makes a living managing hundreds of Macs in the workplace, needs to round out their enterprise support and fix some of the things that to this very day, even as we speak, makes Corporate CIOs disparage Apple. They could, for instance, I dunno, I'm just day-dreaming here, take resources from the Eye Candy Team and put them on the Let's Succeed in the Enterprise Team. Help people like me and my hundreds of Mac users, who don't need resource-hogging Eye Candy, get Real Work done, without my having to find little workarounds here and there so that we play nice in a corpo-rats environment.
And to me, it's not a waste of my time to point this out on rare occasions, so why should someone else care? Hey, y'all, that's why they put comments areas on news articles anyway! So we can comment! So, lighten up!
http://www.beryl-project.org/features.php