[geeks] back to MacOS X

Greg A. Woods geeks at sunhelp.org
Tue Dec 18 15:50:19 CST 2001


[ On Monday, December 17, 2001 at 20:40:48 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] back to MacOS X
>
> Well, obviously it isn't going to be bit by bit identical (unless NTFS was just
> a new name for fat, which it isn't).  The risk is that it could screw up in the
> middle and toast everything.  The other part of the cost is that you loose 
> compatibility with things that read/write FAT, but can't really read NTFS well,
> let alone write to it (say, Linux, BeOS, etc).
> 
> The gain is much more speed, much less compression, journaling, resource forks 

No, no, we don't care about all those things.....

All I want to know is if you do a fresh install direct to NTFS is it
bit-for-bit identical to a fresh install done direct to FAT and then
"upgraded" to NTFS?  Even "bit-for-bit" is a bit of an over-statement.
I really only want to know if all the filesystem meta data (directories,
permisssions, filenames, etc.) is identical -- i.e. in unix terms would
"ls -lR" produce the same results when timestamps are ignored?

>From what I understand (not having done it myself, mind you) that's the
problem with upgrading HFS+ to FFS in MacOS X.

Of course in M$-NT there's a good likelyhood that the installed system
is engineered not to require any features of NTFS so there's nothing
lost by installing it on FAT and then upgrading.....  But that's just a
lame excuse.... :-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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