18 ms·
The Format Dialog in Windows NT
- Dalewyn 3y agoAs the old saying goes: There is nothing as permanent as a temporary solution.
- cm2187 3y agoI think that was about taxes!
- wlesieutre 3y agoIt’s perfect, I hope they don’t replace it with an “elegant UI”
- thombles 3y agoFormat needs an update. We are getting the update ready for you . . .
- Nextgrid 3y agoDon't forget to leave a review and send feedback (network-attached /dev/null).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zamadatix 3y agoIt's "replaced" already under Settings -> Storage -> Disks & volumes. When doing it through File Explorer the old one gets called because File Explorer is still (largely) a legacy style app. I actually quite like the new UI as far as the replacement of the format dialog but the portions that replace the Disk Manager functionality are a bit lacking because it doesn't have the graphical representation of the disk layouts. Default view: https://i.imgur.com/56yZ8gZ.png https://i.imgur.com/56yZ8gZ.png Advanced view section: https://i.imgur.com/fKb3R8c.png https://i.imgur.com/fKb3R8c.png Formatting an existing partition: https://i.imgur.com/DmbX3FQ.png https://i.imgur.com/DmbX3FQ.png It's not perfect but it does largely retain the same layout while matching with the OS theme and adds a few options that used to be multi paged wizards in the disk manager. Minor things like "format" is a bit more direct than "start" and "cancel" a bit more apt than "close" sneak in as well. I'm sure it being 33% wider will be the end of the world to someone though. One thing I think I'm a bit split on is it still expects you to enter new partition sizes in MB. It does at least add localized number separators but it seems a bit silly to worry about how many millions of megabytes given the numbers will only grow with time for here.
- rbanffy 3y agoI think it's really sad they replaced the disk defragmenter UI. It was nice to look at the blocks being moved around. Worth keeping a spinning metal hard disk just for that.
- Lammy 3y ago> the dialog is still my temporary one from that Thursday morning, so be careful about checking in "temporary" solutions! Not only still there but inspired others, like the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that I always used to bypass the 32GB FAT32 limit: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hp_usb_disk_storage_format_tool.html https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hp_usb_disk_storage...
- accrual 3y agoIt's a useful tool! I used it to create a 128GB FAT32 flash drive for sharing my games collection between retro PCs.
- accrual 3y agoDave Plummer is such a cool guy. I love how casually he writes about building one of the most ubiquitous kernels of all time. > He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[4] for the Amiga and many other software products. He has been issued six patents in the software engineering space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer
- amanzi 3y agoHis YouTube channel is great too! https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage
- hoistbypetard 3y agoYes! It always makes me smile when the algorithm tells me to watch something from there.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoMight want to read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813625 If the softwareonline.com part doesn't convince you I don't know what does.
- amanzi 3y agoWhat are you hoping to convince me of? I did some further research but didn't find anything that would make me not want to watch his YouTube channel. e.g. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2821079/internetshield-vendor-pays-to-settle-deceptive-ad-suit.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2821079/internetshield...
- jonny_eh 3y agoThis guy claims Plummer is full of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812561
- nine_k 3y agoI'd say that there are no temporary and permanent solutions, but there are bad and good solutions. A good solution, even if implemented quickly, will stick, because it's good (enough). A bad solution can also stick, if it's the only one available / viable for some time, and then everything else has to be backwards-compatible to it.
- chilling 3y agoI worked at one of the biggest and oldest banks in Europe, and our production was often filled with these 'temporary solutions.' They were typically created as quick fixes for major issues resulting from previous temporary fixes.
- userbinator 3y agoI remember seeing a patch floating around that removed the 32GB limit; can't find it now but this was back when XP was the most popular OS.
- asveikau 3y agoThe mkfs or newfs tools on any Linux or *BSD don't have the limit. The Windows kernel also does fine on larger volumes formatted on a free OS. I do this all the time for SD cards. (Because who wants exfat?)
- giorgosts 3y agodoes fat32 support larger files than 4GB, common for video files shared with USB or SD cards?
- asveikau 3y agoNo. A lot of software will split files for this use case.
- chungy 3y agoWho doesn't want exFAT? It's all around better.
- asveikau 3y agoIt's not as universally supported and it's patent encumbered.
- chungy 3y agoIf you have some random set-top box or camera that doesn't support exFAT, fair enough, but the situations are becoming few and far between. Windows, Mac, Linux all have native support for it. No (practical) volume size or file size limits is a huge win for exFAT over FAT32.
- bc_programming 3y agoI was able to confirm in the Windows NT4 source code that he originally wrote some of the code for the format dialog on 2-13-95. That much is true. (late 1994, early 1995, close enough) >"I also had to decide how much 'cluster slack' would be too much, and that wound up constraining the format size of a FAT volume to 32GB." NT4 didn't support FAT32, and NT4 actually was actually able to be 4GB rather than 2GB for a FAT volume because NT4 allowed 64K clusters, so actually exceeded what most systems were able to do at the time. Formatting as FAT in NT4 had no cluster check or option. The cluster size used was decided based on the size of the volume. Furthermore, the The 32GB limitation for FAT32 volumes was originally in the internal format functions, not the dialog itself. On Windows 2000 (Which does support FAT32) you can try to format a drive bigger than 32GB as FAT32, but the formatting will fail, as it is hard-coded at the end of the format to fail trying to format FAT32 volumes larger than 32GB. The dialog itself isn't what presents this limitation and it is shared by the command line format.com which uses the same functions. Not sure why he seems to always exaggerate his own involvement. He's got people believing that he wrote the Zip folder code that Microsoft literally licensed from Info-Zip because he had to touch it to get it integrated. I guess exaggeration is what "influencers" do, and that's what he is at least trying to be now.
- wannacboatmovie 3y agoI thought that sounded dubious. The 32GB limit is also enforced in diskpart.exe (for the Windows-uninitiated, a console tool for disk manipulation) which would mean it's decoupled from any UI code. In other words, the UI is not what is enforcing the limit OS-wide.
- Maxious 3y ago"vzip150.zip" credited to plummer@visualzip.com doesn't mention anything about info-zip https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=7&l=V https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=7&l=V Where did the covette come from then? https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-the-little-red-corvette-that-designing-windows-zip-folders-bought-shares-details https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-...
- 3y ago
- cap10morgan 3y agoThis highlights a common pitfall: If you “solve” a problem with a “temporary” solution, you lower the priority of the better solution below every unsolved problem. And there are always enough of those to ensure no one ever revisits the temporary solutions.
- jonny_eh 3y agoI've noticed this in my career. The lesson is to not "ship" something until you're proud of it. Sometimes that's easier said than done though.
- Gormo 3y agoThen perfectionism sets in, you wind up tweaking and adjusting every detail ad infinitum, and never ship anything. Bird in the hand, worse is better, etc.
- jonny_eh 3y agoRight! That's why I suggest "proud of" not "sure there are no flaws". If your level of "I'm proud of this thing" is "I can't think of any way to improve it" then you should probably recalibrate.
- Sander_Marechal 3y ago"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works" I have no idea where I heard that, but I use it often at work to ensure we don't ship temporary solutions but do it right the first time.
- pif 3y ago> "There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works" > I use it often at work to ensure we ... do it right the first time. If it works, you did it right!
- omegabravo 3y ago
- jaydeegee 3y agoAbout 14years ago in my first week at a new job I cobbled some code together to query our ticketing system (BMC Remedy) as a sort of quasi queue monitor. It's had a few cosmetic iterations but its still running the same backend code.
- xerox13ster 3y agoThis name has been popping into my head a lot recently. I hated it a decade ago at Walmart and it was a right PITA, but I would absolutely KILL to be using BMC Remedy at this point. I hate Salesforce for tech work and support tickets. It is the worst experience possible. Remedy was Remedy and it was obscure and weird and hard to use at times. But I swear to god Salesforce is going to cost me my job becuase it makes it impossible to do my job well. Why can't I just open one ticket in one browser tab without 15 other tickets popping into a second tab bar? Why does it NEEEEEED to hide whatever other tab I was working on in a drop down, why can't I sort, filter, rearrange, or resize anything? IT'S BRAIN BREAKING. Anyway thanks for reading this rant. The idea of running any sort of query or script in Remedy sounds like water in the desert to me now. I'd settle for using service-now to track things. Anything but Salesforce dammit.
- ranger207 3y ago> I got out a piece of paper and wrote down all the options and choices you could make with respect to formatting a disk, like filesystem, label, cluster size, compression, encryption, and so on. > ... > It wasn't elegant, but it would do until the elegant UI arrived. This doesn't follow IMO. It presents all the options you need in a simple interface; what would go into a more "elegant" interface?
- jameshart 3y agoAre you... a programmer by any chance?
- TillE 3y agoTo improve things, we need to talk about common user scenarios. Problem is, normal users will approximately never have to format a disk, and it's a perfectly adequate interface for nerds. If this were the 90s and everyone was still using floppy disks, yeah it would be worth making it slightly more user-friendly.
- Dalewyn 3y agoThis thing literally is from the 90s when everyone was still using floppy disks.
- omegabravo 3y agoThis interface was perfectly acceptable in the 90s, and it's perfectly acceptable today. Dropping a big graphic with a large circle button labelled format would have been worse. I say this as someone who writes my fair share of aesthetic user interfaces. My takeaway is different. If your "temporary code" is sufficient to solve the problem, then it may last 30 years. If it was an actual problem, it would have been fixed by now.
- seoulmetro 3y agoI'm a programmer and I can't even stand the formatting on Linux distros. Windows was usable even as a kid.
- itvision 3y agoThere is nothing more permanent than the temporary. There is nothing more temporary than the permanent. At least that's what the Russians say.
- dugmartin 3y agoBeware of "good enough" temporary solutions: we have a core logging component at work that was written by an intern and has the word POC (proof of concept) in it. Its data format is what an intern would create but by the time anyone really noticed that it had written so much data that the budget and effort of fixing it outweighed its problems.
- nlitened 3y agoMaybe if nobody has been noticing for a long time, then it really is a "good enough" solution which was not really worth bike shedding. I usually try to calm myself that we can't do everything perfectly all the time, and we should prioritize the most important things, and let some less-important things slide.
- ilitirit 3y agoI was watching one of his vids recently about C++ tricks and he talked about one time he submitted about 1m changed lines of Windows source code in a single commit, to a repo that didn't even support branching. It's crazy how devs used to work back in the day. Here's his YT channel for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage
- naikrovek 3y agoI like this guy, and his stories from Microsoft are good. But man, he has gotten a lot of mileage out of this story.
- rbanffy 3y agoWindows has some dark corners where the Windows NT heritage is clearly visible. One would imagine the abstract UI definitions would remain consistent with the latest look and feel provided by different presentation layers added later - a button is still a button, since the late 1970's, and the definitions of a modal dialog box are easily translatable into whatever passes for abstract UI definitions for the latest release. It's a bit frustrating to see that large parts of a very popular OS (used in life-critical applications) are abandoned like that.