Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 11:26:35 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
cc: Vic <tudor AT cam DOT org>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: The is world dropping MS-DOS. What about DJGPP? (Was Re: Quake
In-Reply-To: <199709072011.NAA03020@adit.ap.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970908112526.4267D@is>
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On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, Nate Eldredge wrote:

> It is true that the FAT file system is very antiquated. On my Linux system
> (using e2fs), I notice *much* faster file access (especially for things like
> un-tarring) than on DOS.

How much faster?  Can you give numbers in terms of bytes/sec when
copying files, or files per second when searching for files (as in
"find / -name 'foobar*'")?  What kind of DOS system do you use (plain
DOS, Windows, what version, what disk cache)?  How much RAM does your
machine have installed?

The reason I'm asking is that my experience indicates that the
differences between FAT and inode-based filesystems are *not* what
explains how fast the file I/O works.  For example, a typical
Windows 95 system is about twice as fast as an optimized DOS system
(with a large SmartDrv cache) *for the same FAT disk*.  (Windows 95
might be even faster than that if you tell it in Control Panel that
your machine is a Network Server.)

So it's not the way the filesystem is layed out on the disk that
matters, it's how the file I/O is implemented in the OS.