undefined | Better HN

0 pointspilif15y ago0 comments

It's funny how the poster of that article came to the conclusion that a relatively new and not well-known filesystem was safe to use after two reboots and one battery removal.

If something is twice as fast as something else, with all likelihood, the faster thing to some extent does less than the slower thing.

If "less" in this case is stuff for which there is no need on a small device with low storage capacity, then, fine, he's right to use it.

If however "less" is less protection against data loss in edge cases, then this was a risky choice indeed.

He should at least have tried removing the battery while the phone was provably busy actually writing to the filesystem.

The joys of web forum based "development" done by "experts"

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

wazoox15y ago· 2 in thread

NILFS, as a log-structured filesystem, is particularly well suited for flash storage. Its performance wouldn't be nearly as good on a spinning rust benchmark.

mtklein15y ago

I'd always thought that a log-structured filesystem is uniquely suited to spinning rust drives, as it never has to seek its head---it just keeps writing.

wazoox15y ago

No, actually it's ideally suited for SSD because it never write twice to the same place and manage garbage collection in an SSD-friendly way (wear-leveling). NILFS has been enhanced with SSDs in mind lately.

jrockway15y ago

The joys of web forum based "development" done by "experts"

As enjoyable as comments on forums about how poorly researched comments on forums are?

(I don't think the guy was using his comment to advocate that everyone immediately reformat their phones. I think the idea was, "this idea is worth researching in more detail".)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse