OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21614/NILFS_a_File_System_to_Make_SSDs_Scream Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:12:00 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Looking forward http://osnews.com/thread?367005 http://osnews.com/thread?367005 Even though I don't run my OS from SSD anymore, I'm really looking forward to using NILFS2! Hope it will be very stable as well. Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pepa) Comments A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367014 http://osnews.com/thread?367014 I get so disheartened when I read about all these great new SSD-focused file systems as I know full well I'll always end up using FAT32 out of necessity because either the SSD will be used in a portable device, or I'll want Windows compatibility for the not-so-rare occasions I lend my drive to mates.

It really is about time we moved on from FAT32 (but is this likely to happen when MS have a vested - read: patented - interest in keeping people hooked on FAT32?) Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments RE: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367031 http://osnews.com/thread?367031 I partitioned by 1TB external drive. 1st partition is a 100MB FAT32 partition which currently holds one file, an ext3 driver for windows (http://www.fs-driver.org/). 2nd partition is the rest.

I don't see any way around it either.Edited 2009-06-04 19:20 UTC Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FunkyELF) Comments RE[2]: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367036 http://osnews.com/thread?367036 Do you find the Windows ext3 driver any good?

I read somewhere it was a little glitchy so never risked it Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments RE[3]: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367040 http://osnews.com/thread?367040
Do you find the Windows ext3 driver any good?

I read somewhere it was a little glitchy so never risked it


Of the 4 times I've booted into Windows on my laptop the 1 time that I accessed the ext3 partition it worked fine.

Still have yet to use it on my external drive since I only use that for offline backups. I just thought if I ever wanted to bring all of my data to say my parent's house or something it would be nice to have the driver right there on the drive.

My brother on the other hand, who isn't very tech savvy at all was using Linux for a bit until the router got moved out of his room. His wireless wasn't configured (shame on me I guess for not setting it up in the first place and also for letting the newb use Gentoo instead of Ubuntu). Anyway, I had him set up with dual boot so he just used used Windows with all of his data on an ext3 partition. He never had any problems. He's been running for over a year in that configuration. Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FunkyELF) Comments Not just for SSDs http://osnews.com/thread?367058 http://osnews.com/thread?367058 I feel it's worth pointing out that NILFS isn't just for SSD devices. Indeed, AFAIK the principles of log structure filesystems predate the popular use of SSDs in computers.

On a conventional hard drive a log structured filesystem still has nice properties (should achieve high write bandwidth, no fsck required on unclean shutdown, similar to journalled FS, efficient snapshots / checkpoints are free).

I think it's quite exciting to see this FS finally merged into mainline Linux. It's not had as much publicity as btrfs but it's still a really interesting bit of code. Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mark Williamson) Comments RE[3]: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367071 http://osnews.com/thread?367071 I have been using that driver for years - maybe 4 or 5 years without issue.

Systems I've installed for others (one partition for windows, one for data files) and they've never noticed any issue.

One benefit is that users can have "large files" when FAT doesn't do big files.

As disk drives got larger some of the formatting tools create inodes that are too large and currently the driver needs an inode size of 128. This is a mkfs.ext2 -I128 option or similar... Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (project_2501) Comments Comment by bnolsen http://osnews.com/thread?367115 http://osnews.com/thread?367115 I'm very interested in reformatting my netbook to nilfs2 entirely after 2.6.30 comes out and nilfs2 is deemed stable.Edited 2009-06-05 09:30 UTC Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bnolsen) Comments RE: Not just for SSDs http://osnews.com/thread?367117 http://osnews.com/thread?367117 There's a lot to be said about having a lot of small tools, each good for its particular task. zfs especially and maybe btrfs seem a bit susceptible to crushing themselves trying to do way too much.

nilfs will suck performance wise on platters. Writing will be fast but the inherent massive fragmentation will kill a spinning disk setup. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bnolsen) Comments RE: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367122 http://osnews.com/thread?367122 That's what I did for years (fat32), but I've turned my newest portable hdd to ntfs (almost exlcusively windows machines at work and colleagues) and use ntfs-3g at home, I had no problems yet (6 months and counting). Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (l3v1) Comments RE: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367308 http://osnews.com/thread?367308
..as I know full well I'll always end up using FAT32 out of necessity..


Fat16 is still a patent-free option, for drives Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TObYv) Comments RE[2]: A slightly off-topic rant http://osnews.com/thread?367374 http://osnews.com/thread?367374 [q]Fat16 is still a patent-free option, for drives Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments