6 ms·

The part about NTFS is slightly incorrect. It wasn't really a new file system. It was a copy of High Performance File System (HPFS) for OS/2, that was originall

The part about NTFS is slightly incorrect. It wasn't really a new file system. It was a copy of High Performance File System (HPFS) for OS/2, that was originally implemented in assembler by Microsoft's best programmer Gordon Letwin. NTFS and HPFS even used the same partition id.

jmmv 3y ago
Oh thanks. I must have forgotten about that; if you have read the book, do you know if this was explained? Will need to read more and try to update the text!
jvert 3y ago
NTFS was definitely a new filesystem and supported many capabilities not in HPFS. Windows NT also shipped with HPFS support which was a complete reimplementation of the HPFS filesystem which shipped with OS/2.
chasil 3y ago
The DEC people added some stuff. "The MFT structure supports algorithms which minimize disk fragmentation... While this strongly resembles the W_FID of Files-11, other NTFS structures radically differ." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS "ODS-2 is the standard VMS file system, and remains the most common file system for system disks (the disk on which the operating system is installed)... NTFS - Has many structural and metadata similarities with Files-11 and is almost certainly conceptually derived from it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
They use the same partition id because that was the partition id used for IFSes in OS/2 (and therefore all non-DOS filesystems). This should not be taken as a sign of their similarities (or differences).
kimixa 3y ago
Also some of the features listed (Compression, ACLs, volume sizes) were incrementally added over years and not available at first release, which somewhat invalidates the comparisons with other filesystems "Of the era". The NTFS of today is rather different to the NTFS of 1993.
- chungy 3y ago
  NT 3.1 absolutely did have ACLs in NTFS.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    Sure, but were (relatively) limited compared to later releases. And the on-disk format was completely changed for windows 2000, hence me saying what you call "NTFS" today is different to what it was originally. If you differentiate between ext2/3/4, which are all forwards-compatible like NTFS, you need to do the same here. Though that "forward compatibility" may be an update pass when first mounting an older version of the filesystem, which may break backward-compatibility. Though that may be desirable, especially if you want to use the new features. I remember there being a bit of a stink at the time when Windows2000 would automatically update the NTFS version and make it incompatible with NT4.0 if you didn't have the latest service pack, and even with that update some of the system tools didn't work on that filesystem anymore.

jmmv 3y ago

Oh thanks. I must have forgotten about that; if you have read the book, do you know if this was explained? Will need to read more and try to update the text!

jvert 3y ago

NTFS was definitely a new filesystem and supported many capabilities not in HPFS. Windows NT also shipped with HPFS support which was a complete reimplementation of the HPFS filesystem which shipped with OS/2.

chasil 3y ago

The DEC people added some stuff. "The MFT structure supports algorithms which minimize disk fragmentation... While this strongly resembles the W_FID of Files-11, other NTFS structures radically differ." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS "ODS-2 is the standard VMS file system, and remains the most common file system for system disks (the disk on which the operating system is installed)... NTFS - Has many structural and metadata similarities with Files-11 and is almost certainly conceptually derived from it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

They use the same partition id because that was the partition id used for IFSes in OS/2 (and therefore all non-DOS filesystems). This should not be taken as a sign of their similarities (or differences).

kimixa 3y ago

Also some of the features listed (Compression, ACLs, volume sizes) were incrementally added over years and not available at first release, which somewhat invalidates the comparisons with other filesystems "Of the era". The NTFS of today is rather different to the NTFS of 1993.

chungy 3y ago
NT 3.1 absolutely did have ACLs in NTFS.
- kimixa 3y ago
  Sure, but were (relatively) limited compared to later releases. And the on-disk format was completely changed for windows 2000, hence me saying what you call "NTFS" today is different to what it was originally. If you differentiate between ext2/3/4, which are all forwards-compatible like NTFS, you need to do the same here. Though that "forward compatibility" may be an update pass when first mounting an older version of the filesystem, which may break backward-compatibility. Though that may be desirable, especially if you want to use the new features. I remember there being a bit of a stink at the time when Windows2000 would automatically update the NTFS version and make it incompatible with NT4.0 if you didn't have the latest service pack, and even with that update some of the system tools didn't work on that filesystem anymore.