Re: IIgs files from PC

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>>I believe, based on my own experiences, that the major HFS
>>bug has been corrected with the patch.  If there are other
>>HFS bugs, I have not experienced them.  In a user survery,
>>it is important to record both positive data and negative data.
>>It is my belief that the other so called HFS problems are
>>really poor hard drive practices such as not backup up
>>data or restarting the computer while the drive is being
>>accessed.  Such things will kill ProDOS as well as HFS
>>partitions but on a ProDOS partition, there are utilities to
>>fix damage.  But as long as you keep backups, all should
>>be fine.
>
>Backing up the data on your HFS volumes may not help you.  I've read
>messages from one user who backed up his HFS partition and when it
>became corrupted, he restored from his backup to find out that the
>corruption had started to occur before he had made the backup and he
>hadn't noticed so he ended up losing some files anyways.

I copy the files individually to a Zip drive.  I verify before and
after the Finder 'select all' file copy.  No problems so far.

Obviously you would not want to back up by simply copying
volumes using a block copy.  That's a bad habit for ProDOS
partitions too.

>Problems can and do happen with the HFS FST and just because a few
>people have been lucky so far doesn't mean that there aren't problems
>that will affect others.

I've had problems with my ProDOS partitions, but I do not
automatically go around blaming the FST.  For years, one
of my ProDOS volumes had "stuck" files that were
damaged and could not be deleted.  It got that way
because I did only volume block copy backups and thus
never knew there was file damage.

Why was there file damage?  Could it be the ProDOS FST?

Or is it more likely that a program or a power glitch caused
data corruption?  If so, could such glitches not also cause
HFS problems?

>This is why I don't recommend using HFS volumes on a IIgs because I
>can't be sure they won't run into problems and lose files.  Both the
>HFS FST and Archiver have known nasty bugs which is why using them is
>not recommended.

There is one known bug in the HFS FST.  The rest is pure
speculation.

If you or I start running around and claim that there are
"known bugs" in the ProDOS FST, just watch how many
folks will bring up horror stories.  That's because any kind
of file system will sometimes have corruption of data.

This is why I say it is important to keep a count of those
who have good experiences with the HFS FST rather than
just discounting those experiences as "luck" or else you
will be propagating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

>Personally, I'm not comfortable using software with known nasty bugs,
>especially if I can live without using that software.

The only known bug of the HFS FST can be patch.  The
rest is pure speculation.

I am not saying for sure there are no more bugs, but just
take HFS FST hysteria with a grain of salt.