Re: hfs files

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>>"Adalbert Goertz" <goertza@fatalerr.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Why would someone want to read hfs files on a //GS?
>>>What types of hfs files can be USED on a //GS?
>>
>>IIGS files, of course.  Any Apple IIGS program that uses
>>GS/OS can be stored and generates documents that can
>>be stored on an HFS partition.
>>
>>What avantage is that, you ask?  For one thing, file names
>>can be longer than 15 characters and have spaces.  You
>>can save your AppleWorks GS page layout document
>>as "Apple User Group Newsletter" rather than "A2.UG.NL"
>>if you were using HFS instead of ProDOS, for example.
>>The second advantage is that HFS breaks the 32MB per
>>partition barrier...and replaces it with the ability to make
>>and use 2GB (2000MB) partitions!
>
>There are a couple reasons to not use HFS on the IIgs at present,
>though.  First and foremost is the lack of disk utilities for
>recovering from errors, undeleting files, sorting directories, et al.

There is a lack of utilities, but the way I deal with it is to back up.
Back up!  I can't stress how important that is!  My smaller hard
drive (the 170MB one, not the 1GB one) recently crashed.  I
had backups on Zip disks, but ironically, the ProDOS backup
was corrupted.  It was the victim of the dreaded Archiver volume
backup bug.  The HFS volume, because more of my stuff was
on there, I opted to back it up by copying files to the Zip disk
from Finder.  So in this case, I was able to recover my HFS files
but not my ProDOS files.

The hard disk can't be accessed at all, by the way, so having a
utility like ProSel does not help.

Again, I stress BACK UP!  If you do, then HFS and ProDOS
are not that functionally different in this regard.

>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.