Reliable Firewire drives

[John C. Welch]

On 01/11/2008 03:41 AM, "Dan Shoop" <shoop at iwiring.net> wrote:

>> That's how it SHOULD be. This idea that someone who just wants to
>> back their
>> stuff up needs to care about the FS is inane, and lazy.
> 
> Well I'd hardly call it lazy. The majority of ppl don't backup. Or use
> Time Machine. A filesystem that allows you to be lazy passes the "mom
> test" far better.

>From what I can tell, the majority of Mac OS X 10.5 users are jumping on
Time Machine like a cat on tuna. The fact that the FS lets you back up
easier is useless if the restore is manual and tedious. Backup programs have
been around forever. Why was TM even needed? Oh wait, because they were
designed by geeks for geeks, and they all kinda sucked to use. TM is an
attempt to make backup not suck and not be so highly modal.

> 
>> It's making things
>> easy on programmers, and harder on the people using the programs,
>> and that's
>> NOT how things are supposed to work.
> 
> It does no such thing. ZFS provides a method to seamlessly protect
> data in ways that Time Machine can't. Time machine can't fix corrupted
> files. Time Machine can't work with only one volume to protect data.
> 
> ZFS permits you to have backups w/o programmers. If you want to fal
> back, you just roll backwards.

And every copy of ZFS ships with a UI that is as easy to use as TM's, and
integrates with every application in the same obvious, discoverable way as
TM, allowing you to, for example, roll back a specific spreadsheet to a
specific version without having to manually do a FS Search? And it can do
this to a network volume? *REALLY*? Oh Dan, please, do show me the links to
the screenshots showing the ZFS UI that does this that ships as a standard
part of ZFS. Please, please do?

> 
>>> 
>>>> What TM offers that *any* fs doesn't is ease of use and a good UI
>>>> and Layer
>>>> 8 integration so the users can easily back up data. Neither the User
>>>> nor the
>>>> Application should give a rat's patootie about the FS underneath as
>>>> long as
>>>> it works, which is as it should be.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> But ZFS doesn't need a UI to access the backed up files, they're
>>> exposed in the filesystem. (Which one could argue is also the case if
>>> you examine a Time Machine volume, with the exception there that it's
>>> a different filesystem.)
>> 
>> Dan, stop missing the point. TM is abstracted from the filesystem,
>> just like
>> other applications are. The value of TM is not in silly
>> propellerhead FS
>> arguments over who has the biggest FS 'nads. It's in the fact that
>> if I'm in
>> Numbers, and I need to find an old version of the spreadsheet I'm
>> working
>> on, I hit the time machine icon, scroll a bit, and bang, I'm good. No
>> searching a file system.
> 
> Which requires programmer intervention. It requires programmers to
> utilize APIs. It requires a lot of effort by many more people. Nothing
> happens wih TM automagically. Nothing.

It does to the *user* and that's the part that counts.

> 
> With ZFS if you find you're f**cked you can just issue a command or
> two and be back to where you were previously. Sure there's not eye
> candy and dancing bears but then again you don't need them either.

Bulldookey. The non-technical users do. The secretaries. The mothers who
just want to write a letter to their children. The fathers who just want to
do the same. You know who I'm talking about Dan, they're the people that IT
people support. *They* need that eye candy and dancing bears. Just like you
aren't going to teach every driver to rebuild an engine, *nor should you
have to*, you're not going to teach everyone who uses a computer the ins and
outs of the low-level FS commands. That's been tried for decades, and look
how well *that* worked.

> 
>> No running spotlight or other queries against
>> backup/creation/modification dates or other file metadata.
> 
> I'm not sure why you feel that's necessary with ZFS, though it
> certainly could be with Time Machine.

What, ZFS can READ YOUR MIND too? You don't need to do ANYTHING to find an
old file? You just say "ZFS! I COMMAND YOU TO BRING ME THIS SPREADSHEET FROM
A WEEK AGO! MAKE IT SO!"?? It's *magical*?

Sorry dude, you have to do SOMETHING to find the data.

> 
>> You just see the version you want, and ba-doom, it's good.
> 
> Um... and ZFS doesn't do that how? Heck, you can even use the (ugh)
> Finder.

Again...the UI is important.

> 
>> The UI, the usability is what has real value.
> 
> Which is exactly what ZFS is designed to avoid. Special UIs.

You're either being deliberately obtuse or you haven't talked to someone not
in IT every in your life. It's up to you which one, because the third option
would make you too dumb to actually type, so that's not really possible, now
is it. UI matters and you know it. If it didn't, you wouldn't be supporting
Macs OR Windows, and we'd all be using Linux in a command line shell. In
fact Dan, you use Mail...why, that's a...*special UI*, now isn't it. Why it
would appear that even YOU find value in them. Why dan? All you need is
Pine, right? Why Mail, if "special UIs" are to be avoided?

> 
>> The FS underneath it is at
>> worst a non-issue, and at *best* a non-issue, because that's what it's
>> supposed to be to people using TM: a non-issue.
> 
> Yes Time machine works fine for those that use it, those who have
> programs coded to it, and works nicely if everyone is interested in
> expending time and effort with handling Time Machine cruft. But how
> many people are running Time Machine? Certainly no one with one disk,
> like your fabled Powerbook/MacBook users on the road. And that's
> exactly where ZFS scores, as it can protect you even in the situation
> where you have one spindle.

Until your hard drive has a mechanical failure, then you're every bit as
hosed as you would be with any FS. Unless you're going to tell me that ZFS
also has maaaaaagical hardware protection that keeps electromechanical
failure from happening. You know what people on the road do Dan? They spend
the money for a FW/USB drive, and...OMGWTFKHAAAAAAAN!!!!111 They back up to
THAT! JANET!BRAD!JANET!DRSCOTT!ROCKY!UGH! How is that POSSIBLE?

Don't be a prat Dan, you know perfectly well that mobile users have portable
drives they back up to on the road, and TM works perfectly well for that. As
far as how many people are running TM? Well, while the plural of anecdote is
still not data, anecdotal accounts suggest that your impressions of it's
non-use are rather wrong.

> 
> Oh, and I might add that TM is extremely more wasteful in space
> requirements. Need I mention how bad it is with large, ephemeral
> files??? It suck donkey balls for disk images, Parallels/
> VMware, .mboxes, ... the list goes on.

OMG, TM is not TEH PURFECKT! What.a.shocking.revelation. I am so stunned. Oh
wait, no, no I'm not. TM, like ZFS, has areas it's good in, and areas it's
not. Wow, it's just like every piece of software or hardware created in the
totality of human computer history. Didn't see THAT coming.

-- 
John C. Welch         Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com              Mac and other opinions
jwelch at bynkii.com