Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 18:05:00 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: mark@quickweb.com (Mark Mayo) Cc: terry@lambert.org, roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ufs is too slow? Message-ID: <199611120105.SAA19076@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.94.961111194152.15306A-100000@vinyl.quickweb.com> from "Mark Mayo" at Nov 11, 96 07:49:06 pm
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> > > Just to keep people tuned, James Brister (from ISC, author of INN 1.5 & > > > Innfeed) is considering/working on such a file system. There is some > > > discussion at this moment in the inn-workers list... > > > > Article directory lookup too slow? ...Use a btree directory structure. > > Just curious, how would a NTFS perform in this scenario? As far as I > remember, NTFS allows btree directory structures. Also NTFS allows per > file compression, and "live" partition extension (making a logical drive > spread across multiple disks, or extending the size of a logical partition > on the current disk). It seems to me that NTFS has quite a bit of > functionality, but how does it perform compared to UFS - under the > 'general' and extreme cases (such as news). Volume spanning is "trivial" (ie: BSD already has it). NTFS itself is slow; not because it has to be, but because of implementation. In point of fact, Microsoft itself has been quoted as recommending that people who need more speed go to VFAT instead of NTFS. The directory lookup speed is probably the sole win; on the other hand, as I argue every time the LMBench stuff comes up, directory operations are the least frequent use of an FS. The mode frequent is file data content reads, which account for ~76% of FS usage, writes, which account for 18% more, leaving 6% for all other operations, including delete, create, and lookup. These figures are from a Novell study. > I personally would love to see support for NTFS in FreeBSD, and although > I'm not saying I have the technical ability to implement it, I think I > might start working on this as a little project in my spare time. File > systems are cool, but I have no experience implementing one. Where should > I start? I'm assuming there must be a few good references out there (I > have a Tanenbaum book on OS's, which covers UFS and Filesystems a little), > and I get the MSDN Enterprise Subscription stuff, so I'm assuming NTFS > must be documented in there somewhere... Start with the BSD sources, the read-only NTFS for Linux, and the book: Inside the Windows NT File System Helen Custer Microsoft Press ISBN 1-55615-660-X US$9.95 Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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