Re: IIgs files from PC

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2000 18:53:59 -0600, Phoenyx <quazar@dcnet2000.com>
wrote:

>I've heard some of the stories too, but I don't put as much faith
>in them. As a tech, I find that many problems are started and or
>compounded by user error and often blamed on hardware/software
>faults to protect the users pride. As long as you practice safe
>computing, you will find the HFS to be just as reliable as most
>other disk formats.

It should be impossible for a user, under normal operating conditions,
to corrupt files on their hard drive as long as there is no hardware
or software problems.  They can run into problems if they are doing
low level block editting, which isn't normal operating, or they have
bad hardware or buggy software.

Hardware problems can cause corrupted files on disk regardless of what
operating system you are using and bad hardware is usually quite
obvious.

Software problems are specific to an operating system, though.

If someone can use a single hard drive partitioned into both ProDOS
and HFS volumes and doesn't have any problems with his ProDOS
partitions but does have problems with his HFS partitions then it is a
safe bet that their hardware is fine.

This leaves only software as being a problem.  In the case of GS/OS we
know that the HFS FST has problems one (and only one) of which is
corrected by the HFS patch.  There are more bugs in that code still
because people are still running into problems with HFS volumes.

One of the knowledgeable Apple II folk on Delphi once theorized in
chat one night that one of the other HFS FST bugs seems to be related
to the order or somehow related to how you add or delete files from an
HFS volume.

Personally, I will not recommend using HFS volumes on a IIgs unless
the user also has a Mac and that they set things up properly so that
the Mac can do any volume repair that might be needed.  I wouldn't
want to be responsible for recommending HFS and finding out later that
the user lots a ton of data due to file corruption.

It is just easier and safer to use ProDOS on the a IIgs.  Now if I
could just get some other projects out of the way I can get back to
working on expanding ProDOS to allow volumes larger than 32MB.

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| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
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