Re: HFS, P8 & Linux/Kegs

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

phoenyx <phoenyx@texas.net> wrote:

>NOTE: This post is kind of long. Please consider
>others if quoting it.
>
>Here's some interesting info regarding those HFS
>partitions. HFS like Prodos can only access 65536
>blocks on a partition. To be able to use more than
>32k per volume HFS uses a variable block size. 512k
>for 800k disks, 1024k and up depending upon volume
>size for hard drives.
>
>After setting up Kegs/Linux with an HFS volume
>I noticed a lot of wasted space on the volume. For
>instance, a 67 byte finder.data file took up a whole 4k.
>So I decided to play around with an older spare HD
>and check some different volume sizes for wasted
>space.
>
>I partitioned the drive to various sizes, then used a
>test file of 13,312 bytes on each partition.
>
>As it turned out there was no difference with volume
>sizes under 64meg. Each used a block size of 1024.
>the file showed 13k used on the disk.
>
>Volumes sized at 130 meg seem to use 2048 byte
>blocks and the test file showed 15k on disk. 2k of
>wasted space.
>
>Volume size of 517 meg showed 17k on disk with
>4k of wasted space.
>
>Volume size of 1.2 gig showed the file as 20k which
>results in 7k of wasted space. Just think, each finder
>file in each directory using 20k. sheesh!

Hi Pheonix.  This is not surprising and works sort of like
the wastage of FAT "cluster size" considerations for
large FAT partitions in Windows and MS-DOS.  FAT32
helps somewhat, but still has issues.  Similarly, HFS+,
the successor to HFS, addresses some of these issues.

But...I've never seen a IIGS user with a hard drive larger
than 1GB!  ;-)  I and several other diehard IIGS users
use this size drive because we use up a lot of space
(for a IIGS user), but even I have got only about a little
over half of the drive filled up.  Thus, it is safe to say
you are probably not going to see a 1.2GB partition on
a IIGS.  450k partitions, yes, but probably not 1.2GB
ones.

>This is definately a lot of wasted space for an 8/16 bit
>computer. On the MAC this may not be so noticable
>with 32 bit files, but II users expect more efficiency
>than that.

Well, AppleWorks GS hogs up as much disk space as
early versions of ClarisWorks (which, ironically, has now
been renamed as AppleWorks).  For 450k partitions
(the size most likely seen on the 1GB drives that are
becomming popular on the IIGS), the wastage does not
seem very apparent.

>So this leaves the HFS user with some decisions to
>make. Do you partition the drive with smaller volumes
>to make it more efficient or waste some space to make
>it easier to use? With a large drive this may be a tough
>choice. Perhaps the best solution is a 63 meg partition
>for applications which may have lots of small files and
>directories and divide the rest of the drive into 130 meg
>partitions for archives or such. This is the method I've
>chosen. While it requires more effort when dealing with
>path names it is certainly better than loosing several
>megs of data storage.

For a 1GB drive, I'd still stick with my current layout
of 2 ProDOS partitions and 2 HFS ones.  For a 2GB
drive (which IIGS users would be forced to use soon
now that the smaller drives are becomming less
available), I'd make it 4 HFS ones and 4 ProDOS ones.
8 partitions is still bearable.  ;-)

>Back to HFS. If you are using it with volumes larger
>than 63 meg you might want to check the disk's file
>usage.  Smaller volumes result in more usable space
>and faster access since less data is read per block.

You might be right.  I've never noticed, though.  I use
96MB HFS (unpartitioned) Zip disks.  Of course that's
probably because Zip disks are inherently slower than
hard drives.

I'll have to play around with different sized partitioned
Zips to see this phenomenon in action.