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Exactly. Just another case of "640K should be enough for anybody". But we have to admit that storage has leapt hugely in size and very rapidly. In 1990 or ther

Exactly. Just another case of "640K should be enough for anybody". But we have to admit that storage has leapt hugely in size and very rapidly. In 1990 or thereabouts, a common hard disk size was about 30 megabytes. Today I have files that are many times that size, and we think that that is quite normal. A mere five or so years later around 1996, that size had jumped to 4000 megabytes! These days my laptop has 6 million megabytes. We can't blame filesystem planners for lack of foresight. They were blind-sided by progress just like the rest of us were.

mnw21cam 6y ago
I have a single file that is 6 million megabytes in size.
- Thristle 6y ago
  who/what reads that file?
  - mnw21cam 6y ago
    tar
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      That stretches the definition of "a single file" when it is basically a filesystem itself.
      - bilekas 6y ago
        Not necessarily, it's all relative really. But the point is, the limitations or expected limitations are only relevant until they're not.. Also why not tar a drive for archive if I want :}
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    I haven't managed a 6TB file before, but I did have a >100GB log file I ended up parsing with awk just to be sure that the memory consumption on the consuming process wouldn't go crazy.
  - petschge 6y ago
    Not my file, but I have produced HDF5 files in that size range using simulation codes on supercomputers and paraview can open them and render 3d view as video from it (eventually).
ben509 6y ago
He had already seen exponential growth in storage capacity and could easily extrapolate from that. Moore's law was coined in the '60s, after all. This wasn't a lack of foresight, this was being prudent. If I can't come close to testing an upper limit, it's correct to acknowledge it may degrade in a way I haven't anticipated. Especially since he was writing a GUI which should generally avoid handing users footguns, and which can be updated over time.

mnw21cam 6y ago

I have a single file that is 6 million megabytes in size.

Thristle 6y ago
who/what reads that file?
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  tar
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    That stretches the definition of "a single file" when it is basically a filesystem itself.
    - bilekas 6y ago
      Not necessarily, it's all relative really. But the point is, the limitations or expected limitations are only relevant until they're not.. Also why not tar a drive for archive if I want :}
- jcranmer 6y ago
  I haven't managed a 6TB file before, but I did have a >100GB log file I ended up parsing with awk just to be sure that the memory consumption on the consuming process wouldn't go crazy.
- petschge 6y ago
  Not my file, but I have produced HDF5 files in that size range using simulation codes on supercomputers and paraview can open them and render 3d view as video from it (eventually).

ben509 6y ago

He had already seen exponential growth in storage capacity and could easily extrapolate from that. Moore's law was coined in the '60s, after all. This wasn't a lack of foresight, this was being prudent. If I can't come close to testing an upper limit, it's correct to acknowledge it may degrade in a way I haven't anticipated. Especially since he was writing a GUI which should generally avoid handing users footguns, and which can be updated over time.