* Re: FW: reported vs actual file sizes
@ 1999-06-25 19:09 N8TM
1999-06-30 22:10 ` N8TM
0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: N8TM @ 1999-06-25 19:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: DMcCunney, cygwin
In a message dated 6/25/99 10:43:38 AM PST, DMcCunney@roper.com writes:
> (NT through 4.0 does not grok Fat32. NT 5.0
> is supposed to be able to.) These can use smaller clusters for more
> efficient storage.
W2K does fine at reading and writing FAT32 partitions, but not at running on
them. IMHO it wouldn't hurt to mention that cygwin runs better on NTFS
partitions and it's not too good to install W2K on FAT in the hope of W9X or
older NT versions being able to deal with it.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: FW: reported vs actual file sizes
1999-06-25 19:09 FW: reported vs actual file sizes N8TM
@ 1999-06-30 22:10 ` N8TM
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: N8TM @ 1999-06-30 22:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: DMcCunney, cygwin
In a message dated 6/25/99 10:43:38 AM PST, DMcCunney@roper.com writes:
> (NT through 4.0 does not grok Fat32. NT 5.0
> is supposed to be able to.) These can use smaller clusters for more
> efficient storage.
W2K does fine at reading and writing FAT32 partitions, but not at running on
them. IMHO it wouldn't hurt to mention that cygwin runs better on NTFS
partitions and it's not too good to install W2K on FAT in the hope of W9X or
older NT versions being able to deal with it.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* FW: reported vs actual file sizes
1999-06-25 11:39 Dennis McCunney
@ 1999-06-30 22:10 ` Dennis McCunney
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Dennis McCunney @ 1999-06-30 22:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Cygwin Mailing list (E-mail)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plai@Lynx.COM [ mailto:plai@Lynx.COM ]
> Sent: Friday, June 25, 1999 1:48 PM
> To: cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
> Cc: jb@Lynx.COM
> Subject: reported vs actual file sizes
>
> After installing cygwinb20.1 on a few machines, there's been
> some troubling observations made. Hopefully someone on this
> mailing list can answer the questions.
...
> On NT SP4 with a FAT (32??) filesystem, all the cygwin-b20.1 binaries,
> ...\cygwin-b20\H-i586-cygwin\bin\*.exe, have "used" file
> sizes that are multiples of 32,768 bytes. This seems very
> unreasonable, especially in the case of:
>
> true.exe
> Size: 395 bytes (395 bytes), 32,768 bytes used
> ^^^^^^^^^usual^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^used^^^^^^^
>
> On Win98 with FAT32 filesystem, the "used" sizes seem to be
> multiples of 4096bytes.
>
> The Windows binaries, explorer.exe, doesn't seem to have this problem.
>
> So, the question is:
> Is this a problem w/ my configuration of Window98/NT or is there
> something wrong with the file/io stuff within cygwinb20.1?
This may not be a problem at all, though I do wonder about the the used
sizes reported under NT. It isn't a Cygwin issue.
The "usual" size is the actual number of bytes in the file. The "used"
size represents the amount of disk space required to hold it.
The smallest amount of disk DOS/Windows I/O routines can deal with
is a cluster. How big a cluster is depends upon the version of DOS
and the size of the drive. Older versions of DOS, up to DOS 6.22/Win 3.X
used a FAT16 file system which could handle a maximum of 65536 clusters
on a logical drive, and couldn't handle drives larger than 2GB. Win9X
uses a FAT32 files system, and NT uses either FAT16 or NTFS, depending
on how it was installed. (NT through 4.0 does not grok Fat32. NT 5.0
is supposed to be able to.) These can use smaller clusters for more
efficient storage.
A 4K cluster is reasonable for Win9X/Fat32 for a large hard drive. It
means that each file will occupy a minimum of 4K of disk space, even if
the file itself is only one byte. DOS/Windows can't deal with smaller
disk allocations than that.
A 32K cluster size for NT sounds like it was installed on a FAT16 volume.
FAT16 is extremely innefficient at space allocations, and has large
amounts of wasted space, especially at larger cluster sizes. Unless
there is some good reason why the NT volume has to be FAT16 (like other
things besides NT will have to be able to read it), you would be better
of converting the volume to NTFS. NTFS uses a 512 byte cluster size,
among other improvements.
Bottom line, however, hard drives are _cheap_, with disk space at 50
cents a megabyte or below (probably below), so wasted space my not be
cost effective to address.
> -Paul
_______________
Dennis McCunney
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* RE: FW: reported vs actual file sizes
1999-06-26 10:42 McCunney, Dennis
@ 1999-06-30 22:10 ` McCunney, Dennis
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: McCunney, Dennis @ 1999-06-30 22:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Cygwin Mailing list (E-mail)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: N8TM@aol.com [ mailto:N8TM@aol.com ]
> Sent: Friday, June 25, 1999 10:07 PM
> To: DMcCunney@roper.com; cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
> Subject: Re: FW: reported vs actual file sizes
>
> In a message dated 6/25/99 10:43:38 AM PST,
> DMcCunney@roper.com writes:
>
> > (NT through 4.0 does not grok Fat32. NT 5.0
> > is supposed to be able to.) These can use smaller
> > clusters for more efficient storage.
>
> W2K does fine at reading and writing FAT32 partitions, but
> not at running on them. IMHO it wouldn't hurt to mention
That's good to know. I haven't heard about any timetable
for our shop to upgrade to W2K -- we're still integrating an
acquisition that is Novell based, so I don't expect it
to be soon.
What do you mean when you say W2K isn't good at running
on FAT32 partitions?
> that cygwin runs better on NTFS partitions and it's not too
> good to install W2K on FAT in the hope of W9X or
> older NT versions being able to deal with it.
My NT server is all NTFS, but that isn't normaly accessed
directly - it performs file and print sharing functions and
it the gateway to my section of the WAN. My desktop is
currently Win95, but my plan is to migrate to NT Workstation.
I'll break out a seperate partition for NT, format it NTFS and
install it there, but I have a _lot_ of stuff on the FAT32
portion I would prefer to copy over as time permits, rather than
doing a backup, wiping the drive, reformatting and installing NT,
and restoring from backup.
Besides, I'd prefer to have dual boot capability. One of my
jobs is tech support, and debugging a user problem when I'm on
NT and they're on 95 isn't something I look forward to.
_______________
Dennis McCunney
--
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* RE: FW: reported vs actual file sizes
@ 1999-06-26 10:42 McCunney, Dennis
1999-06-30 22:10 ` McCunney, Dennis
0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: McCunney, Dennis @ 1999-06-26 10:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Cygwin Mailing list (E-mail)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: N8TM@aol.com [ mailto:N8TM@aol.com ]
> Sent: Friday, June 25, 1999 10:07 PM
> To: DMcCunney@roper.com; cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
> Subject: Re: FW: reported vs actual file sizes
>
> In a message dated 6/25/99 10:43:38 AM PST,
> DMcCunney@roper.com writes:
>
> > (NT through 4.0 does not grok Fat32. NT 5.0
> > is supposed to be able to.) These can use smaller
> > clusters for more efficient storage.
>
> W2K does fine at reading and writing FAT32 partitions, but
> not at running on them. IMHO it wouldn't hurt to mention
That's good to know. I haven't heard about any timetable
for our shop to upgrade to W2K -- we're still integrating an
acquisition that is Novell based, so I don't expect it
to be soon.
What do you mean when you say W2K isn't good at running
on FAT32 partitions?
> that cygwin runs better on NTFS partitions and it's not too
> good to install W2K on FAT in the hope of W9X or
> older NT versions being able to deal with it.
My NT server is all NTFS, but that isn't normaly accessed
directly - it performs file and print sharing functions and
it the gateway to my section of the WAN. My desktop is
currently Win95, but my plan is to migrate to NT Workstation.
I'll break out a seperate partition for NT, format it NTFS and
install it there, but I have a _lot_ of stuff on the FAT32
portion I would prefer to copy over as time permits, rather than
doing a backup, wiping the drive, reformatting and installing NT,
and restoring from backup.
Besides, I'd prefer to have dual boot capability. One of my
jobs is tech support, and debugging a user problem when I'm on
NT and they're on 95 isn't something I look forward to.
_______________
Dennis McCunney
--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* FW: reported vs actual file sizes
@ 1999-06-25 11:39 Dennis McCunney
1999-06-30 22:10 ` Dennis McCunney
0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Dennis McCunney @ 1999-06-25 11:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Cygwin Mailing list (E-mail)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plai@Lynx.COM [ mailto:plai@Lynx.COM ]
> Sent: Friday, June 25, 1999 1:48 PM
> To: cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
> Cc: jb@Lynx.COM
> Subject: reported vs actual file sizes
>
> After installing cygwinb20.1 on a few machines, there's been
> some troubling observations made. Hopefully someone on this
> mailing list can answer the questions.
...
> On NT SP4 with a FAT (32??) filesystem, all the cygwin-b20.1 binaries,
> ...\cygwin-b20\H-i586-cygwin\bin\*.exe, have "used" file
> sizes that are multiples of 32,768 bytes. This seems very
> unreasonable, especially in the case of:
>
> true.exe
> Size: 395 bytes (395 bytes), 32,768 bytes used
> ^^^^^^^^^usual^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^used^^^^^^^
>
> On Win98 with FAT32 filesystem, the "used" sizes seem to be
> multiples of 4096bytes.
>
> The Windows binaries, explorer.exe, doesn't seem to have this problem.
>
> So, the question is:
> Is this a problem w/ my configuration of Window98/NT or is there
> something wrong with the file/io stuff within cygwinb20.1?
This may not be a problem at all, though I do wonder about the the used
sizes reported under NT. It isn't a Cygwin issue.
The "usual" size is the actual number of bytes in the file. The "used"
size represents the amount of disk space required to hold it.
The smallest amount of disk DOS/Windows I/O routines can deal with
is a cluster. How big a cluster is depends upon the version of DOS
and the size of the drive. Older versions of DOS, up to DOS 6.22/Win 3.X
used a FAT16 file system which could handle a maximum of 65536 clusters
on a logical drive, and couldn't handle drives larger than 2GB. Win9X
uses a FAT32 files system, and NT uses either FAT16 or NTFS, depending
on how it was installed. (NT through 4.0 does not grok Fat32. NT 5.0
is supposed to be able to.) These can use smaller clusters for more
efficient storage.
A 4K cluster is reasonable for Win9X/Fat32 for a large hard drive. It
means that each file will occupy a minimum of 4K of disk space, even if
the file itself is only one byte. DOS/Windows can't deal with smaller
disk allocations than that.
A 32K cluster size for NT sounds like it was installed on a FAT16 volume.
FAT16 is extremely innefficient at space allocations, and has large
amounts of wasted space, especially at larger cluster sizes. Unless
there is some good reason why the NT volume has to be FAT16 (like other
things besides NT will have to be able to read it), you would be better
of converting the volume to NTFS. NTFS uses a 512 byte cluster size,
among other improvements.
Bottom line, however, hard drives are _cheap_, with disk space at 50
cents a megabyte or below (probably below), so wasted space my not be
cost effective to address.
> -Paul
_______________
Dennis McCunney
--
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1999-06-30 22:10 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
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1999-06-25 19:09 FW: reported vs actual file sizes N8TM
1999-06-30 22:10 ` N8TM
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1999-06-26 10:42 McCunney, Dennis
1999-06-30 22:10 ` McCunney, Dennis
1999-06-25 11:39 Dennis McCunney
1999-06-30 22:10 ` Dennis McCunney
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