[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] size of filesystems

larry@nstar.uucp (Larry Snyder) (08/26/90)

>In article <1053@p4tustin.UUCP> carl@p4tustin.UUCP (Carl W. Bergerson) writes:
>>Performance:
>>
>>	"Smaller filesystems are faster" - Xenix Installation Guide
>>
>>	This is generally true for all versions of *ix.

>Can you explain why? Becuase I cannot see why it should be like that.
>The only reason I can think of is reduced head-movement, but if you
>divide one disk into to parts, that effectively defeats that, by
>having to move the head back and forth between the parts.

Remember how much slower the Xenix filesystem is as compared with the
FFS being shipped with 386/ix and SCO Unix?  Maybe for some reason
under Xenix small file systems are faster, but with the free list in
memory and the fast file system (at least with 386/ix) I doubt if the
size of the filesystems actually make much of a difference.

Personally, I have a 150 meg streamer, so I like to keep the filesystems
around 150 megs (all except the root which I keep at 16 megs)..

-- 
      Larry Snyder, Northern Star Communications, Notre Dame, IN USA 
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     Public Access Unix Site (219) 289-0282 (5 lines/PEP/HST/Hayes-V)