Apple

<rant> The disk with my aperture library has slowly been eating itself into oblivion. Two days ago aperture refused to open the library, and after attempting all else (including chmod -R 777 the .aplibrary, as the first errors were permissions-related) I decided a verify/repair of the disk, and disk utility has decided it's so bad the volume won't mount. bold red text, showing nasty error messages scrolls up the console when I try. To the effect of: your disk has gone tits-up... hope you have good backups...nyuk-nyuk-nyuk. The kick in the pants is it has been slowly corrupting data for months (which explains a lot of things, like " how on earth can the new itunes possibly be THIS buggy " as my itunes music was also on that disk) You might say it's my own fault for using aperture with it's über-fragile library structure in the first place, but I prefer to see it as the canary in the coal mine before I started having big issues.

I could restore it all, but my main backup is corrupted as well. I can certainly get everything I want back, I have some redundant backups, but to get it all would be a waste of time. To me, some data loss is not the end of the world.

The dirty kick in the pants is, the disk has been on it's way out for a few months, so a very small percent of the errors have made their way into my backups. and OSX has had nothing to say about it. From now on, weekly checkups with diskutility set to run in the middle of the night... and no more bargain-basement hitachi disks from the clearance rack (I hear seagate constellation is good?)

Yes, this is on a 2006 mac pro with 10.9.2 with a modified boot.efi. Yes, it is an unsupported configuration. No, I don't care (as it works fine otherwise). Would a better filesystem saved the disk? No. Would it have told me it was failing sooner? Maybe.

</rant>

Yeah, when HFS+ decides to crap its pants, it does it bad.

Does DiskWarrior work on 10.9? That's always been my go-to utility for fixing HFS volumes, though of course I'm still in 2009 with 10.4.11.

I'm a huge fan of DiskWarrior (which does work on 10.9.x), but in cases where the disk is obviously starting to fail at the hardware level and has problems mounting, my go-to tool is Data Rescue from Prosoft Engineering .

Data Rescue is an extraction tool, not a repair tool. It will attempt to copy everything it can from a dying disk to a new disk. IMHO, if you're the kind of person who tries to fix broken Macs rather than throw them away, it is absolutely worth spending the $99 for Data Rescue before you need it. Alternately, you can download it and run it in demo mode to see if it can help before forking over the cash, but that may be a risky proposition for a disk that may be falling apart.

(Disclaimer: I have no connection to Prosoft, aside from having my bacon saved by their utilities on more than one occasion. They also have an interesting history , having written disk utilities and other tools as contractors for Apple and others from "back in the day." Their NetWare client kept the Macs in my former BigCo running on the network for many years after Novell dropped support for Macs.)

<rant>Now it's 2014 and no ZFS in MacOS yet. But a very colorful clickable userland - because this is the most important thing of it all.
Well, Windows can't be taken seriously either with that NTFS-junk.</rant>

I shall migrate to Linux or use more IRIX ...

Geoman wrote: <rant>Now it's 2014 and no ZFS in MacOS yet. But a very colorful clickable userland - because this is the most important thing of it all.

of course. for the desktop there's no professional section anymore. everything is consumer level.

I shall migrate to Linux or use more IRIX ...

linux on the desktop is pointless because of the ever shining lack of software support from pretty much all major companies. so it comes down to a combo of irix and osx (or wintendo if you must )

...actually it is the latter (Wintendo)

In the meantime let's get some popcorn and watch the windows-8-induced downfall of Microsoft and rise of linux on the desktop thanks to Valve's Steam. (or not?)

josehill wrote: I'm a huge fan of DiskWarrior (which does work on 10.9.x), but in cases where the disk is obviously starting to fail at the hardware level and has problems mounting, my go-to tool is Data Rescue from Prosoft Engineering .

<Purchase> *click*

ZFS is available for Mac you know... https://code.google.com/p/maczfs/ .

Nice. I'll have to see if I can port that to Tiger.

noth wrote: ZFS is available for Mac you know... https://code.google.com/p/maczfs/ .

Okay - that a good thing to read.

BUT (as always) it belongs right onto the installation disks for use with rootdrive IMHO.

I wonder if the disk subsystems in a 2006 mac pro is up to a 3-disk raidz with 3 or 4tb disks. I think this configuration would be ideal for my needs. I am only concerned because I know they sold some sort of RAID controller plug-in board to take over from the built in disk controller. And application compatibility is also a concern... I already use aperture, itunes, an xboxy-sharing service I use called connect360... time machine would be a bonus. MacZFS doesn't like USB disks but what's their opinion of firewire? esata is almost a non-starter as OSX doesn't support hot-plugging.

The PCI-e SSDs are nice-looking. One of those would make a good system disk. A 3-disk raidz for working files and storage, some sort of external backup that doesn't need to be super fancy but if it's automated with TM it would be a blessing... and one disk sled spare as I like to keep a windows VM on it's own disk.


Amazing how one faulty disk turns even me into a storage nerd ZFS seems overkill on a root disk which in my case is barely ~70GB and doesn't grow much. Super easy to backup and restore.

Geoman wrote: <rant>Now it's 2014 and no ZFS in MacOS yet. But a very colorful clickable userland - because this is the most important thing of it all.
Well, Windows can't be taken seriously either with that NTFS-junk.</rant>

I shall migrate to Linux or use more IRIX ...

In the meantime let's get some popcorn and watch the windows-8-induced downfall of Microsoft and rise of linux on the desktop thanks to Valve's Steam. (or not?)

What colorful userland in OSX? It's all depressingly monochrome nowadays... I like windows 8, as far as the different windows goes, there's nothing wrong with it and all is to be expected ... microsoft has been in a downfall since everything after windows 2000/xp and the only thing 'rising' nowadays will be ipad and friends from samsung etc.

guardian452 wrote: Amazing how one faulty disk turns even me into a storage nerd ZFS seems overkill on a root disk which in my case is barely ~70GB and doesn't grow much. Super easy to backup and restore.

XFS runs on the smallest O² to the largest Altix-installations.
***
Of course companies like Alsoft won't be happy if Apple switched to ZFS or anything else. (Or then on the other hand have a reason to sell new software for it.)

guardian452 wrote: What colorful userland in OSX? It's all depressingly monochrome nowadays... I like windows 8, as far as the different windows goes, there's nothing wrong with it and all is to be expected ... microsoft has been in a downfall since everything after windows 2000/xp and the only thing 'rising' nowadays will be ipad and friends from samsung etc.

You're right - the GUIs become more and more minimalistic these days. I don't like that - recently I sat in front of a new Macintosh of a friend and I did not find the scrollbar! They appear only if one scrolls

Under the hood both OS Windows and MacOS don't come up with something essentially new - concerning the kernel Linux is the main innovator right now.

As for filesystems, I don't trust any of them - all the important stuff is on a RAID 10 + scheduled backups.

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74

Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening. The cause of the problem is social. There's almost none of the improvement for its own sake, for the sake of glory, that you see in the Linux world.

Under the hood there is a *lot* of improvements... timer coalescing, compressed memory, app naps, all the bullet points Compressed memory is very good for those of us with a mac air with only 2gb (tho I'll probably be upgrading soon anyways.. the 4gb logic board replacements are cheaper than 2gb and I fried a USB) The scrollbars, by default, appear when scrolling if there is a touchpad input device. If there is a mouse, they are always there. You could set it whichever way you want...

But nobody ever notices that stuff... so nobody cares... I think there was just too much entrenched stuff to do a filesystem replacement for the whole system, at the time they were considering ZFS. But if there was going to be a Right Time, it would have been with release 10.6... Better late than never, tho I suspect they are working on their own improved FS more suitable for their users.

guardian452 wrote: But if there was going to be a Right Time, it would have been with release 10.6... Better late than never, tho I suspect they are working on their own improved FS more suitable for their users.

I suppose, though the 10.6 was a really big refinement and consolidation of the platform. It was even billed as having minimal new end user-visible features, with nearly all of the improvement either under the hood or targeted at developers. I look at it as the "reference release" for Intel Macs, with 10.9 becoming (perhaps) the next "reference release." It took around four years to get from 10.6 to 10.9's under-the-hood improvements. I can't imagine it would've been possible to get that far at the time 10.6 was released, though I agree that the market would have raved about those improvements, if they would have been deliverable. As it was, it was probably a big enough effort just to get a fully Cocoa'd Finder built and tested.

But, yeah, I'd love to have the 10.6 user experience with 10.9's "invisible" improvements.

josehill wrote: But, yeah, I'd love to have the 10.6 user experience with 10.9's "invisible" improvements.

Considering what you both Gardian & Josehill wrote, I take backe my 'under the hood statement'.

And for me Windows user I'd love to have the Windows 7 user experience with 8.1 "invisible" improvements.

guardian452 wrote: I wonder if the disk subsystems in a 2006 mac pro is up to a 3-disk raidz with 3 or 4tb disks. I think this configuration would be ideal for my needs. I am only concerned because I know they sold some sort of RAID controller plug-in board to take over from the built in disk controller. And application compatibility is also a concern... I already use aperture, itunes, an xboxy-sharing service I use called connect360... time machine would be a bonus. MacZFS doesn't like USB disks but what's their opinion of firewire? esata is almost a non-starter as OSX doesn't support hot-plugging.

The PCI-e SSDs are nice-looking. One of those would make a good system disk. A 3-disk raidz for working files and storage, some sort of external backup that doesn't need to be super fancy but if it's automated with TM it would be a blessing... and one disk sled spare as I like to keep a windows VM on it's own disk.


Amazing how one faulty disk turns even me into a storage nerd ZFS seems overkill on a root disk which in my case is barely ~70GB and doesn't grow much. Super easy to backup and restore.

Looking at the FAQ for the MacZFS project, it seems that to get Time Machine to cooperate you need to export the ZFS volume with netatalk and then create a sparse drive on the network drive... or there's TimeMachine-ZFS, commandline but it seems to do the job. I've not tried any of this, but I imagine that if you need to use USB or e-sata then you eject the pool, then the drive. You, won't be able to use ZFS as the root drive for OS X though, at least not for what's needed to boot the OS from what I read. For a workstation, ZFS seems to bring too many benefits to be ignored, especially with atomic writes.

Geoman wrote: And for me Windows user I'd love to have the Windows 7 user experience with 8.1 "invisible" improvements.

Exactly! I was thinking the same thing about Windows when I wrote my comment about 10.6. (Some of the visible Mac changes had me thinking about using Windows more often, but then MS released Win8, so now I've shifted work to a notebook. Made of paper.)

I also agree with your remark about filesystems - "As for filesystems, I don't trust any of them - all the important stuff is on a RAID 10 + scheduled backups."

Considering what you both Gardian & Josehill wrote, I take backe my 'under the hood statement'.

You're a gentleman to say that, Geoman. On balance, it is debatable just how important those "under the hood" improvements really are if their impact is not widely felt, so I do see your original point. The old "If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it" story. Time will tell.

recently I sat in front of a new Macintosh of a friend and I did not find the scrollbar! They appear only if one scrolls

Yeah I've had that problem on 10.7, I'm not a mac pro by any means so I found that annoying.

I've had file loss on ext3 and jfs both on archlinux. I've had a few messed up files on xfs too, though that might have been crash / powerloss induced.

My solution has been to maintain 3 copies of my data:
1) on my direct attached storage on my main pc, which is now open indiana on zfs root.
2) On a synology NAS raid-5 with 4x 3tb hdd
3) On another synology NAS raid-5 with 4x 3tb hdd

And I just copy the data across once a week onto one and then the other, the synology budget nas are just a slow low power arm-cpu linux box that you can ssh into. So I have 1 week and 2 week online backup. They are very slow they it is quite laggy to do anything with them, and torrent hashing overtaxes the CPU to the point that it is painful to get a directory listing from them over CIFS.

But if a file gets corrupted it would overwrite the old copy and corruption would creep into the backups.

Maybe I could have a cronjob create a list of all files along with their md4 hashes and then diff them between both the online backups, and email that to my email account to read during a slow hour or two at work or something.

josehill wrote:

guardian452 wrote: But if there was going to be a Right Time, it would have been with release 10.6... Better late than never, tho I suspect they are working on their own improved FS more suitable for their users.

I suppose, though the 10.6 was a really big refinement and consolidation of the platform. It was even billed as having minimal new end user-visible features, with nearly all of the improvement either under the hood or targeted at developers. I look at it as the "reference release" for Intel Macs, with 10.9 becoming (perhaps) the next "reference release." It took around four years to get from 10.6 to 10.9's under-the-hood improvements. I can't imagine it would've been possible to get that far at the time 10.6 was released, though I agree that the market would have raved about those improvements, if they would have been deliverable. As it was, it was probably a big enough effort just to get a fully Cocoa'd Finder built and tested.

But, yeah, I'd love to have the 10.6 user experience with 10.9's "invisible" improvements.

10.9 is a natural evolution focused on performance, what I meant was if they were going to swith to zfs 10.6 would have been a good time since there were so many other changes. All at once. Like ripping off a band aid. Probably not a good idea I expect a better filesystem, hopefully simpler than zfs or zfs made nice in an 'apple-y' sort of way. I know apple did a lot of work on zfs (around the time when 10.5/10.6 was current) before canning the project, hopefully the trend of a new release every year still allows for big projects like this.

And I'm sorry to say, you have to look hard to see any difference at all between the past 3 releases. They've slowly been draining out the color from the icons and etc but it seems consistent to me...