06-18-2003, 03:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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The WinFS File System For Windows Longhorn: Faster & Smarter
"Around 20 years ago, Microsoft's widely used MS DOS 2.0 operating system could only handle hard drives up to 16 MB. Yet, for the few people using PCs back then, what today seems like a ridiculous memory limitation was not actually a problem, since "mass storage" in those days was about as expensive as a color TV. What was worse in the '80s and '90s was the amount of expensive memory that the DOS OS wasted. Even the first Windows versions were not capable of completely utilizing all the physical memory on the drive.
That was scarcely 25 years ago, but many computer generations later, the problem has been turned on its head. Developers don't have to struggle with restrictions on hard-drive capacities; instead, they have their hands full managing gigantic quantities of data on storage media virtually unlimited in size. FAT systems were never designed to cope with several hundred MB of data on disks of 200 GB.
The dilemma has prompted Microsoft to take action with its next Windows generation. The Windows Future Storage (Win FS) file system will take its place in Longhorn, the successor to XP. For the first time, a server technology will manage data on home PCs via a relational database. This article traces its development and lifts the veil on file systems of the future."
This is an off-topic, but very interesting article that you might want to read. The parallels between the desktop and PDAs is closer than you think - Palm is much-maligned for not having a true file system, instead storing everything in databases, yet we see the desktop world going to a similar place in order to gain numerous advantages. The difference of course is the implementation - if Win FS only allowed Word documents to be 4K in size, I don't think they'd move ahead with it. :roll: The idea of a database-based file system is a very different paradigm than what we're used to, but if done properly (which Palm didn't do), it has some powerful advantages. What do you think? Will we see a similar evolution on the Pocket PC and Smartphone side of things?
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06-18-2003, 03:49 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 405
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......could make getting at your data on a hard drive with a corruped boot sector QUITE a challenge......
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06-18-2003, 03:59 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 354
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The article is a little dated and hence misleading in saying that WinFS is a whole new File System. In fact it is a layer that sits on top of NTFS to provide much better searching and indexing.
Paul Thurrotts longhorn preview includes this snippet with a quote from Mark Myer, OEM Manufacturing Program Manager at Microsoft:-
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The oft-misunderstood Windows Future Storage (WinFS), which will include technology from the "Yukon" release of SQL Server, is not a file system, Mark Myers told me. Instead, WinFS is a service that runs on top of--and requires--NTFS. "WinFS sits on top of NTFS," he said. "It sits on top of the file system. NTFS will be a requirement."
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So it looks like this is an abstraction from the physical file system which goes some way to support new file-system internals in future releases. There should therefore be suitable backup and restore tools to get NTFS files off the system and presumably rebuild the WinFS "index".
Windows CE, like Palm, has an in-built Database engine but it is very limited in terms of searching functionality and size restraints. In effect Windows CE was the first Windows to include a database at API level but it has not been pushed to it's full potential.
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06-18-2003, 04:01 PM
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06-18-2003, 04:22 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 717
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I really liked playing with Longhorn, even though it was buggy as hell, it does look really slick. It has a nice interface, but it is a resource hog. Mind you though we probably will not see half the features in the final release, but it is good to dream.
Look:
Very slick
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06-18-2003, 04:50 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 53
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Palm db system
Can someone explain to me what so wrong with the Palm based file system. It has never irritated me, but I assume it has some fundamental flaws. What are they?
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06-18-2003, 04:59 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,466
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szamot, forget about the interface. The finished product will look NOTHING like Longhorn. Mircrosoft created this current "blue" theme as a temporary placeholder. The "real" GUI will look very sexy, or so I'm told. We'll see.
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06-18-2003, 05:14 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 717
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Foo Fighter
szamot, forget about the interface. The finished product will look NOTHING like Longhorn. Mircrosoft created this current "blue" theme as a temporary placeholder. The "real" GUI will look very sexy, or so I'm told. We'll see.
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Yes that is like MS to do that, but a man can drool in the mean time, but if the new sexy Longhorn will anything remotely as neat as this does I will just have to wet my pants evertime it starts up. Like you said we will see.... :?:
Incidentaly enough I could not copy this theme from Longhorn - which is also called bliss.
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06-18-2003, 05:22 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 298
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Yuck.
Those sshots make me cringe! Can they make things any BIGGER?? :roll:
The default theme on XP is bad enough with a title bar that's MASSIVE. There's a reason why we buy big monitors with high resolutions. And it sure ain't to run big themes to show us less info per screen than we currently have.
That My Computer screen is horrendous. What good is that window when you can't even see all your drives in a single glance? Of cuorse, they better offer some tweaks to this likethey do now, so we can get a detailed or list view when we want as default and we can kill the "Web" sidebars that waste even more space.
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06-18-2003, 05:35 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 185
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by sub_tex
Those sshots make me cringe! Can they make things any BIGGER??
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Actually, according to Fitts Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
So, bigger is better. Sure, being unable to list all your drives in a single screen is pathethic, but i'm sure they'll get to that. But all I want to see in that screen is my drives, so make them big enough and to fit.
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Linear Mode
