PRODUCT NAME Professional File System 2, version 4.2. BRIEF DESCRIPTION FFS replacement filesystem with enhanced reliability, speed and feature set. AUTHOR/COMPANY Name: Great Effects Development Address: Hofwijckplein 46a 2515 RL Den Haag The Netherlands Web page: http://www.greed.nl E-mail: info@greed.nl DISTRIBUTOR Name: Stefan Ossowskis Schatztruhe Gesellschaft für Software mbH Address: Veronikastraße 33 45131 Essen Germany Web page: http://www.schatztruhe.de E-mail: stefano@schatztruhe.de Phone: ++49 (0) 201 788 778 Fax: ++49 (0) 201 798 447 LIST PRICE 99 DM for a single machine licence, 59 DM for an upgrade from AFS. HARDWARE/SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS An Amiga with operating system version 2.0 or higher, equipped with a hard drive and a CD-ROM. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 500 with an A590 SCSI controller, using Kickstart 3.1/Workbench 3.1. INTRODUCTION It's no secret FFS is slow and outdated in many ways. Anyone feel familiar with 2 GB partition/4 GB drive limitation, validation-problems, slow seeking, etc.? If you're absolutely honest about it, you'll admit to yourself that using FFS on a partition any bigger than 500 MB is no picnic, particularly when validating the volume is concerned. Crashes do occur on any given system from time to time, and when this happens, it usually takes place at the worst possible moment. That means another boring eternity of waiting for the drive(s) to validate, which often fails, and then it's time for another tedious session... Fortunately, there's a worthy replacement available now. Meet Professional File System 2, the followup to AFS Pro. It supports partitions up to 104 GB and drives up to 2 TB (2000 GB!) using TD64 or direct SCSI, whilst promising up to 500% speed increase over FFS. Not only that, but your disks are promised to be kept valid at all times. PFS2 comes on CD with a manual provided in AmigaGuide format. Owners of AGA Amigas, who are into gaming, might be delighted to know there's a bonus game called "Kang Fu" included. Not owning an AGA Amiga, I'm unable to test it. INSTALLATION Installation consists of two distinctive phases: In the first phase, all the required files are copied on your HDD by the installer script. These files aren't usable directly from CD, as they need to be serialized with your name and serial number first. As a side remark, Installer v43.3 must be used. It puzzles me, why hasn't it been included on the CD. I guess some legal formality prohibits it's distribution on CD. The installer lets you choose between different PFS2 flavors; the ones available are Normal, Direct SCSI, Multiuser, Direct SCSI Multiuser and Floppy versions. Besides the generic 68000 version, there are optimized versions of each for 68020, 68040 and 68060. In the second phase, you need to install PFS2 on the RDB(s) of your HDD(s) using HDToolBox, HDInstTools or similar solution. Reading the manual before proceeding with this is a Very Good Idea, if not an obligatory move. The AmigaGuide manual contains in-depth instructions for installation, with clarifying screenshot pictures where necessary. If you're upgrading from AFS, the next step will be easy, as it's just a question of adding the new filesystem. PFS2 is fully compatible with Ami-FileSafe and therefore AFS can simply be replaced by PFS2. Unfortunately, existing FFS volumes need to be reformatted; PFS2 stores information on the disk in a different, more reliable and efficient manner. Getting your system partition under PFS2 could be tricky, so here's how I did it. First, I copied everything onto another drive and then set up the RDB with HDToolBox. After this, there was the reboot bit, in order for the new settings to take place. I booted up from the Workbench 3.1 floppy and issued a format command on the system partition, followed by "copy dh1:dh0backup/#? dh0: all clone quiet". Now that these two installation phases have been completed, PFS2 is at your service. REVIEW The CD cover and the documentation promise a lot. Surprisingly enough, none of this is empty hype. PFS2 delivers much higher performance than FFS in all given areas. Simply said, the speed increase is awesome. Read/write operations, scanning directories and deleting files was never this fast before! Not to mention, parallel accesses perform much better. On FFS, it's impossible for me to play a 16-bit stereo sample at the rate of 44.1 kHz straight off the hard disk, if I don't prevent other accesses to that particular volume. PFS2 makes accessing files on the same volume possible, without halts or breaks in the sound. Do remember it's an A500 we're talking about here! PFS2 makes even DC-FFS look like a snail. The manual states: "volume is always valid, no matter what happens". It turns out, even switching power off during a write operation won't damage PFS2 volumes. A technique called "atomic commit" is used, ensuring correct directory structure at all times. If a crash or power loss occurs at the time of overwriting a file, the original file is still in one piece. Seems to work flawlessly, despite all my attempts to torture the poor filesystem to death! No more waiting for the drive(s) to validate. This is probably the best of all PFS2 features, bound to save you most time in the long run. PFS2 is fully AmigaDOS compatible with certain reservations. Fully compatible, yes, but only at filesystem level. Applications accessing the disk directly, thus bypassing the filesystem, won't work if they were specifically designed with a FFS disk in mind. Disk repair and optimizer tools are examples of such. Then again, you don't need FFS disk repair tools for PFS2 volumes, as PFS2 doesn't suffer from FFS problems. You may also forget disk optimizers when using PFS2, as the filesystem itself does very good job at saving data optimally. Have you ever undeleted something from an FFS volume? I'm sure most people have done this, or at least tried to. Well, with PFS2, you needn't scan the entire volume for deleted directory entries (and wait for an eternity for the scan to finish), as there's an invisible directory called ".deldir" in the root of each PFS2 volume, containing the latest 31 deleted files. Restoring files from this directory is as easy as simply copying them elsewhere! If you've got programs that produce logfiles, you might appreciate the automatic truncation feature PFS2 has got on offer. You simply specify the maximum size for the file and it stops growing indefinitely. Chances are, if you've got a TCP/IP stack installed on your Amiga, this feature will come most handy. As a caveat from an A500 user's point of view (of course, this isn't applicable to users of Powerful Amigas), it must be said that PFS2 is more processor intensive than FFS. You notice this particularly when deleting Really Big files from your disk. Still, this isn't a big deal to worry about, as PFS2 performs remarkably well even on a 7 MHz 68000. This could actually be an advantage from a power user's point of view, knowing that PFS2 takes advantage of faster CPU's to the full and therefore delivers more performance. Another, slightly more serious, caveat from an A500 user's point of view: the included tools 'diskvalid' (a basic disk repair utility for PFS2 volumes) and 'pfs2ls' (a directory lister like 'list' or 'dir', capable of displaying PFS2 specific information) don't work on 68000. However, I don't think this is so bad as it sounds; from what's stated in Diskvalid's guide, I deduct this program is designed mostly for analyzing and checking the volume for any problems caused by non-finished development versions of the filesystem. Besides, I've learned from Great Effects Development that a new, 68000 compatible, repair program called "PFS Doctor" will be included on a new upgrade. Of course, it would be nice to be able to run these two tools, but I don't think either (alone or combined) is a really critical issue. I'm very confident on PFS2's ability to stand on it's own feet, without the need to a disk repair program. Call me crazy, but this is based on what I've seen. You see, despite all my attempts to torture this filesystem to death, it has remained in 100% working order. Any more of this treatment, and the _hardware_ would fail, even if the software would like to go on and on. PFS2 is as tough as they come and it's probably the closest thing to "bulletproof software" on Amiga so far. CONCLUSIONS PFS2 is well worth a look, if you ever wondered about life beyond FFS, free of it's limitations. I won't be going back to FFS anymore. Instead, FFS is completely banned from my system now. Prior to PFS2, I used to be highly skeptical about any 3rd party FFS replacement filesystem, but this experience has enlightened me in a way that could be compared to opening one's eyes. No, you won't believe it until you see it. Yes, you will be amazed! No, you don't want to go back anymore. Yes, you will wonder how the hell could you put up with FFS. Here are the pros and cons in a nutshell: + No more validate-wait + Speed + Reliability + Big drive support + Easy undeletion of files - Installation could be hard for a novice OVERALL: 96% This filesystem is near-perfect and an essential purchase for anyone, who ever experienced inconvenience with FFS. In my humble opinion, PFS2 is the most important software package to be released for the Amiga in a long time. PFS2 is exciting news, enough to melt even an old sceptic such as myself. If you're having any doubts, you should try and get over them; the only possibility I see for messing things up with PFS2, would be a result of NOT reading the manual prior to installation phase two. Being familiar with HDToolBox is definitely an advantage. HUNGRY FOR MORE? Mark Harden's PFS2 FAQ is at the following URL: http://www.harden.demon.co.uk/pfs/ If you're an A590 or A2091 user, Guru-ROM V6 is the ideal partner for PFS2. See my A590 FAQ on Aminet: docs/help/a590faq.txt COPYRIGHT Copyright © 1999 Timo Rönkkö This review may be freely distributed and you may do whatever you like with it. Including, but not limited to, printing it out and making a paper airplane. As usual, standard disclaimer applies.