From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 2 07:16:59 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B5BE037B401; Fri, 2 May 2003 07:16:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cain.gsoft.com.au (genesi.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.161]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDAB243F75; Fri, 2 May 2003 07:16:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cain.gsoft.com.au (8.12.9/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h42EGlIW029451; Fri, 2 May 2003 23:46:50 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) From: "Daniel O'Connor" To: David Schultz Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 16:16:37 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 References: <1093.128.39.153.23.1051365009.squirrel@cain.gsoft.com.au> <20030502112413.GA46200@HAL9000.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20030502112413.GA46200@HAL9000.homeunix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200305021616.37560.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> X-Spam-Score: -1.5 () CARRIAGE_RETURNS,IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,REFERENCES,SPAM_PHRASE_02_03,USER_AGENT X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.16 (www . roaringpenguin . com / mimedefang) cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: msdosfs vs 250Gb hard disk X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 14:17:00 -0000 On Fri, 2 May 2003 13:24, David Schultz wrote: > Most filesystems have a unique identifier associated with every > file, but msdosfs does not. The FreeBSD driver invents inumbers > on the fly as the index of the directory entry for the file, > assuming that the entire disk is full of directory entries. These > numbers are 32 bits and they need to be persistent, so it would > not be possible to play any clever tricks with the math. I don't think FAT32 can have 4 billion files..? I understand your point about the limitations of the inode number synthesiser, but I was hoping someone with more knowledge of how FAT works to be able to give some hints :) :) > I suggest that you ensure that all of your FAT32 filesystems are > smaller than 128GB (2^32 * 32 bytes/direntry). Note that msdosfs > performance and reliability generally sucks, so unless you're > using the disk merely as a buffer to transfer stuff between > operating systems, you probably want to rethink your decision. Yeah, I realise it's perfomance suck, but we ARE using it to transfer data between multiple OSen :) I have just worked around it with <128Gb partitions for the moment. -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 9A8C 569F 685A D928 5140 AE4B 319B 41F4 5D17 FDD5