[MW Forums]

On stage Wednesday in Washington D.C., Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz revealed that his company’s open-source ZFS file system will replace Apple’s long-used HFS+ in Mac OS X 10.5. more

[hexor]

Off with his head.. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[nittany4]

ok, so please forgive my ignorance, but a few questions come to mind
1. do you have to re-format the drives in your mac before installing 10.5 (thus wiping them?)
2. can you have external drives that are HFS+ that you share between macs?

/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Daren_Mitchell]

That is THE question on everyone's mind.
Over at Digg.com the majority seems to think that you'll NOT be able to simply install 10.5 and have ZFS installed as well. More like reformat a new drive as ZFS, install 10.5 and use the Migration Assistant to copy files and folders over.
Major pain, but advanced new features often require a bit of elbow grease/sacrifice to be enabled.
Only time will tell however...

[alphanoir]

Ouch!! That's gonna leave a bruise...

[mdawson]

Apple is not Microsoft, so even if ZFS is the default file system for Mac OS X 10.5, HFS is not going anywhere any time soon. OS X already supports multiple file systems and nearly 100% of the installed base uses HFS. Unlike Microsoft, Apple has traditionally bent over backwards to help Mac users transition where the OS is concerned. Just as as the 68K code base and the original HFS file system were supported well into the PowerPC years, the Classic Mac OS has been supported up to the Intel transition and the PowerPC platform gets continued support despite the latter transition, it will be years before HFS+ support disappears. Apple knows better than to force migrate their user base; at least where the OS and software support are concerned.

[leicaman]

This is what I want from Leopard! This would be big. But I have my doubts it will be the default FS. But just in case, I'm going to prepare for a clean install.

[Steve_S]

Quote:

---

This is what I want from Leopard! This would be big. But I have my doubts it will be the default FS. But just in case, I'm going to prepare for a clean install.

---

I'm with you. This would be great, but I have my doubts still. There are technical reasons for these doubts and even Sun has done a fair amount of back peddling since this information slip. The fact that ZFS was coming to the Mac was already known. Making it the default file system is another story.
Regarding the clean install, I always do that with a major release. For starters, it's a good thing to do every couple of years just to keep the system clean of garbage. It's a cheap and easy way of defragmenting your drive as well. Overall, there seem to be much less problems for people who take this route, despite the overhead of reinstalling the necessary applications.

[zwei]

I believe Time Machine solely exists because of Apple's intention to move to ZFS. Not that it won't work on HFS+ (albeit not as well), but if I were going to move to ZFS the first thing I would ask is "What can I do with this new tech" ...hmmm, ZFS does amazing things with data integrity and has a great way to back up data in a space-effective manner. What do we do? Lets make a killer backup app!
I just figured we would be seeing the final product in 10.6... I'm now hoping that isn't the case and we do get major ZFS support in 10.5. It sure looks like it at this point /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[lwdesign]

I'm thinking that ZFS will become an option in Disk Utility just like the various flavors of formats that are now there. New full installations of Leopard (wipe, reformat and install) will probably default to the new ZFS but even then I'm assumng there will be a choice of the file system you can install.
Just because ZFS is coming doesn't mean that HFS is instantly dinosaur meat. After all, OS X can read DOS formatted disks just fine, so it's reasonable that HFS will be around for quite a while.

[lwdesign]

By the way, even though it's slightly off-topic, I had a client come over to my design studio last week and needed a USB flash drive to grab something off her computer. I said no problem, but then remembered the 4GB SanDisk Cruzer I was handing her was formatted for the Mac. She looked down in the mouth until I said, that I could easily reformat the drive for Windows and she was incredulous as I launched Disk Utility and had the reformat done in about a minute and a half. What we take for granted with the Mac OS is new news and amazing to most Windows users.
Once I'd downloaded the data to my hard drive from the flash drive, I reformatted it for OS X in a flash. I love the Mac!

[Steve_S]

Quote:

---

I believe Time Machine solely exists because of Apple's intention to move to ZFS. Not that it won't work on HFS (albeit not as well),

---

I don't know Zack, I tend to disagree with that. It wouldn't make sense to build an HFS solution if your intention was to exploit inherent features of ZFS for time machine. Likewise, why would they demo it on HFS and provide that solution to the developers, etc. That doesn't make sense to me. I think Time Machine is just an extension of Apple's own Backup efforts that they started with their .Mac service. My guess is that they put a cool new interface on it and opened the APIs up to third party developers. That's just a guess of course. Still, if they meant to exploit the features of ZFS and ZFS was to be the default file system, it doesn't make sense to write this for HFS as well.
Also, based on other comments on this thread, we should acknowledge that ZFS is great, cutting edge, etc. However, HFS+ is not a bad file system by any means. Like others have said, it's not going away anytime soon. OS X, like other operating systems, are designed to work with multiple file systems. Likewise, if ZFS were to become the default FS, that doesn't mean you'd have to reformat your external drives, etc. But, changing the default file system is a BIG deal and would require an awful lot of testing. It would also invalidate all of your third party disk utilities. Hopefully companies like Alsoft, Prosoft, etc. have been aware of this change under NDA if this rumor is true.

[zwei]

I'm saying that if they weren't looking at ZFS they probably wouldn't have put as many resources behind a radically new backup system as they have. The main reason I think they added HFS support is because I don't think a lot of people who already own a Mac will do as you say and completely reformat their HD. If there was a simple way to get HFS to ZFS without having to copy all of your data to an external HD or DVDs and reformat ...then you would have a point. I think that this may be why they feel they need to support HFS. That, and the fact that it is indeed "possible" even though it's not going to be as space efficient as it is in ZFS.

I really don't care if they stick with HFS as the default ...if they say ZFS is stable I will definitely be trying it out. I have a good backup scheme and I can afford to try something different /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[j_drake]

Maybe this will sound as if I'm a bit cynical but I do not believe this was a mistake, this was an approved slip of the tongue to kick the interest up another notch for the WWDC presentation by the Steve.
OK, so I am a cynic, sosumi. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif