How fast is PFS-2 ?
GREED claim that PFS-2 is between 2.5 and 5 times faster than FFS.
There is no doubt that PFS-2 is faster than FFS. If you do not believe me try it. There is a demo if you want to try before you buy.
Performance fluctuates because it depends on so many factors :-
GRRED have published the results of a comparison tests between PFS2, FFS and SFS. They conclude that PFS2 is the fastest and most stable filesystem for the Amiga. Large directories FFS and SFS become slower and slower and unreliable. The larger the directory the bigger the distance between PFS2 and FFS and SFS gets.
The test was performed on an A4000/040 with an IDE Quantum Maverick 540 disk. They claim that the difference will be even greater with SCSI. These results are averages of the same test performed a couple of times. It is a practal test performed in DOS, these are real, not fictional results. Everything is in seconds. Make sure to use exact the same conditions (partition,buffers, etc) for every filesystem you test. Take at least 1500 files and 15 MB so the results will be clear.
TOTAL: 2633 files - 65 directories - 39900 blocks
Copy |
Examine |
Delete |
||
PFS2 | 127 |
10 |
19 |
|
SFS | 211 |
13 |
45 |
|
DOS5 | 607 |
13 |
60 |
date
copy dh0:main/#? to dh0:test/ all quiet
date
delete dh0:test/#? all quiet
date
A similar test was performed in the Christmas issue of Amiga Format and the results were the same. Apparently SFS couldn't even finish all the tests because of it's many problems.
Note that disk speed is NOT a good test of a filesystem's preformance. It is designed to test a disk's performance. Have a look at it's results :-
DOS5 Creates 1000 files of 128 bytes : 4 files/second Scan all files in a directory : 2844 files/second Lock and unlock a random file : 11 files/second Open and close a random file : 11 files/second Load a random file : 11 files/second Deletes 1000 files : 199 files/second Random seek/reads of 2048 bytes in 2097152 byte file : 44 times/second Read data using 65536 byte buffer : 1063 kB/second Write data using 65536 byte buffer : 867 kB/second SFS (including setcache!) Creates 1000 files of 128 bytes : 19 files/second Scan all files in a directory : 2527 files/second Lock and unlock a random file : 289 files/second Open and close a random file : 252 files/second Load a random file : 33 files/second Deletes 1000 files : 112 files/second Random seek/reads of 2048 bytes in 2097152 byte file : 44 times/second Read data using 65536 byte buffer : 1519 kB/second Write data using 65536 byte buffer : 1825 kB/second PFS2 Creates 1000 files of 128 bytes : 30 files/second Scan all files in a directory : 2990 files/second Lock and unlock a random file : 176 files/second Open and close a random file : 161 files/second Load a random file : 49 files/second Deletes 1000 files : 134 files/second Random seek/reads of 2048 bytes in 2097152 byte file : 54 times/second Read data using 65536 byte buffer : 1429 kB/second Write data using 65536 byte buffer : 1384 kB/second
As you can see according to diskspeed SFS is slower than DOS5 on some points and DOS5 is faster than PFS2 on some points. Any PFS2 user will see that this has nothing to do with the real performance of PFS2. Just compare it to 'real use' results above ! (or the Amiga Format's comparison if you think GREED cheated on the figures)