Mac OS extended vs. UFS

[Powerbook G5]

I have a question that has been bugging me for a while during the OS X install I was doing. When it asks for you to select a disc to partition, there is an option to either partition for MacOS Extended or Unix File System, but there is no help text anywhere that I can find that actually explains the difference or the pros/cons of each. I did a search but couldn't find anything on the matter, so is there anyone here who has some info on this?

 

[daveL]

The installation note, for Panther at least, says to install onto HFS+. UFS can be used for a separate partion, but it's not recommended for your main installation partition. If you were doing a Darwin install, instead of OS X, then you would use UFS, but MaxOS needs the extra resource attributes that are part of HFS+.

I have no idea if one type is faster than the other. HFS+ includes journaling in Panther, which is nice. No long fsck's on large drives any more.

HTH

 

[Catfish_Man]

UFS in OSX is not particularly good. I would stick to HFS+ unless you need case sensitivity (and I think Panther adds case sensitive HFS+, although I can't remember for sure). HFS+ isn't great, but it's pretty good.

 

[Powerbook G5]

Yeah I heard about case sensitivity in Pather server, but I'm not too sure about Pather client, either. Thanks for the input, I just don't like making a decision like that without some sort of facts/data to give me a good reason to choose a particular way.

 

[4409723]

Classic apps can't run off UFS, nor can you have a working Mac os 9 system installed.

 

[daveL]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Yeah I heard about case sensitivity in Pather server, but I'm not too sure about Pather client, either. Thanks for the input, I just don't like making a decision like that without some sort of facts/data to give me a good reason to choose a particular way.

It wouldn't be very helpful to have HFS+ with case sensitivity on Xserve but not on the client. That would be a bad thing.

I just checked on 7B21 and, so far, it's still case insensitive. Created 'H', then 'h', did an ls -l and the was only 'H'.

 

[Nermal]

I saw somewhere (Apple's site?) that you should use HFS+ unless you've got a specific reason to be using UFS. I don't think Classic will run from a UFS partition, someone will probably be able to confirm this.

 

[4409723]

Originally posted by Nermal
I saw somewhere (Apple's site?) that you should use HFS+ unless you've got a specific reason to be using UFS. I don't think Classic will run from a UFS partition, someone will probably be able to confirm this.

^^ Two posts up ^^

 

[Nermal]

Originally posted by Wes
^^ Two posts up ^^

Oops. Oh well, doesn't hurt to have a second opinion. Even if that opinion is the same as yours. And even if "opinion" is completely the wrong word!

 

[Powerbook G5]

Heaven forbid that Classic may not work...hehe. I swear, it has to be the most annoying thing ever when you accidentally open a Classic application you didn't really intend for and then it goes through the process of booting up OS 9. But yes, I believe I understand now. I was just curious if there was a difference since there is no explanation when you go to select a file system to install OS X onto.

 

[simX]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Heaven forbid that Classic may not work...hehe. I swear, it has to be the most annoying thing ever when you accidentally open a Classic application you didn't really intend for and then it goes through the process of booting up OS 9. But yes, I believe I understand now. I was just curious if there was a difference since there is no explanation when you go to select a file system to install OS X onto.

Currently, Jaguar runs on UFS *REALLY* slowly. I hear that Panther greatly improves in this respect, but I dunno if it's as fast as HFS+ yet.

I also don't know if UFS supports resource forks and such, which is still sometimes used in OS X for different purposes, so you could run into problems with that.

I have a vague recollection that Carbon apps might not run on UFS partitions, either, but I think that's probably wrong and I was thinking about Classic apps instead. I thought I'd mention this just to make sure that; maybe someone can correct me.

 

[MadCabbit]

Case sensitivity

At least there's now an option to create HFS+ volumes to be case-sensitive in addition to journaling as of the newest Panther beta. It doesn't appear to allow installation in such a partition, but hopefully this will be fixed by final.

Case-sensitivity is the last real reason I see to think about using UFS anyway.

 

[Fukui]

As a note, UFS can run classic and classic apps, as long as they are run from a HFS+ format disk image...