The WinFS File System For Windows Longhorn: Faster & Smarter

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030617/index.html' target='_blank'>http://www.tomshardware.com/storage...0617/index.html</a><br /><br /></div>"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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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."<br /><br />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?

[ux4484]

......could make getting at your data on a hard drive with a corruped boot sector QUITE a challenge......

[Peter Foot]

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:-

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."

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.

[cmorris]

Peter - you beat me to it... :wink:

For those interested here is the link... a much more informative article if you ask me.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_preview_2003.asp

[szamot]

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:
http://www.stoneraft.com/junk/p1.jpg

http://www.stoneraft.com/junk/p3.jpg

http://www.stoneraft.com/junk/p2.jpg

Very slick

[isrjt]

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?

[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.

[szamot]

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.

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.

[sub_tex]

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.

[Bruno Figueiredo]

Those sshots make me cringe! Can they make things any BIGGER??

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.

[possmann]

cmoris - excellent link!

No mention of the PPC device OS's there in the road map. It will be interesting to see how they incorporate this OS with some longhorn features - really interesting will be how the PPC hardware makers rise to the graphics challenge... hmmm will we see an ATI or NV graphics card for the PPC eventually?

[Will T Smith]

A file system IS effectively a database that stores binary data types ONLY. It is not a "flat" relational style, rather it's based on a hierarchy.

There are some databases out there that look very similiar like to a file system like "Btrieve" which implements a souped up B-tree data structure.

The difficulty with file systems right now is that their is only one index path, the folder hierarchy. I believe what they are shooting for is comprehensive indexing based on other file tags. Browsing can be done with multiple "views". Ultimately, the physical files are still managed by a traditional "DOS (Disc Operating System)", in this case NTFS.

Multi-Indexed data structures aren't remotely new. You can find them in any CS data-structure texts. They were defined over 25 years ago. The big question is WHY? Multiple index paths leads to more maintenance for every transaction and more chances to get out of sync and "corrupt" the data structure. Ultimately, file-management is a pretty good target for these structures.

[Jonathan1]

I love seeing these new GUI's, file systems, etc.
Last I read longhorn isn't going to be out until 2005. Apple's next OS, Panther, (64-bit OS! W00T.) is due out in September which gives them plenty of times to release ANOTHER OS before longhorn.
Then you have the Linux factor. It’s not ready for the masses yet. There is some definite cleanup to be done on the ease of software and driver installs but if you consider where its come from in the last 3+ years its down right amazing. A lot can happen to an OS in 2 years.

All in all when Longhorn is released they should have some competition. Which is a godsend. It makes MS actually do real updates to the OS other then add apps to it and call it innovation. Whether or not its serious competition is another matter.

Oh and on a side note the new IBM’s 64-bit 970 chip, a 64-bit OS, and invariably all the extra apps Apple offers will most likely be 64-bit optimized has caused me to actually take a long hard look at a Powerbook once its available with the 970. I haven’t used a Mac since donated my Apple 2E to a Church. But these new systems are starting to make me drool. Their Powerbook line coupled with a 970 and Virtual PC so I can run windows is starting to sound sweeeeeeet.

[Kiyoshi]

Did szamot's screenies come from a website or is he running a alpha version of Longhorn downloaded from Kazaa? Yes, I downloaded it too but I don't have the time or the extra computer to try it out (who knows what it could mess up?).

Anyways the 2005 release date is what I've also heard, I wonder if 64-bit computers will be around to push MS to make Longhorn a 64-bit operating system. I would also like to agree how MS has made hardware installation almost invisible in the past few years, I remember needing to install drivers for everything I had in my computer, now I can hook up a gamepad or joystick or card reader and XP automatically installs the drivers for me!

[szamot]

Did szamot's screenies come from a website or is he running a alpha version of Longhorn downloaded from Kazaa? Yes, I downloaded it too but I don't have the time or the extra computer to try it out (who knows what it could mess up?).

Anyways the 2005 release date is what I've also heard, I wonder if 64-bit computers will be around to push MS to make Longhorn a 64-bit operating system. I would also like to agree how MS has made hardware installation almost invisible in the past few years, I remember needing to install drivers for everything I had in my computer, now I can hook up a gamepad or joystick or card reader and XP automatically installs the drivers for me!

KAZAA - that's so passé...private ftp's my friends is where it is at. I actually packed this on the slowest PC I could find. Celeron 333 with 198 mb or ram, 4 meg video and 40 gig drive. It took exactly 98 minutes to format, install and configure, I must say that it was quite impressive, as literarily almost no user input was necessary. Having said that, I put in Lindows 3.1 disk into the same PC and run through the same set up, format, instal, configure. It took 11 minutes. In 12 minutes I was already connected to the 2K server streaming mp3’s.

Dell has a 64bit server - quite possibly the worse thing I ever took out of the box. I hope that subsequent release will be far more stable.