Re: hfs files

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:

> >The second reason is that it is horrendously slow.  I've only ever
> >used HFS on 3.5" floppies a few times up to this point so it didn't
> >matter much.  However, I now have an 880 MB HFS partition on my IIgs'
> >hard drive and write to it is as slow, if not slower, than writing to
> >a 5.25" floppy drive.
> 
> BALONY!  I usually respect your comments a lot, Jeff, but this
> is absolutely not true.  If it is as slow as you say, I would not be
> launching almost all of my IIGS programs from HFS volumes.

I agree with both of you.

As Jeff said, the IIgs implementation of HFS is _horribly_ slow for
writing.  Try copying lots of files to an HFS disk, and you can sit
there waiting while the computer seems to do nothing for several
seconds, then finally writes a chunk of data.  This is particularly
noticeable with large files.

This is especially noticeable (and amusing) if you have a noisy hard
drive, e.g. a SyQuest.  When copying a large file to a SyQuest, I can
tell by listening whether I'm writing to a ProDOS disk (reasonably slow
but steady track stepping) or HFS (long pause, then a sudden burst of
furious activity).

This is with an Apple SCSI card and a 7 MHz ZIP GS.  I'd hate to think
what it is like on an unaccelerated machine.


It is pretty good for reading, on the other hand (not much worse than
ProDOS).

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand