ZFS (was Reliable Firewire drives)

[Neil Laubenthal]

On Jan 12, 2008, at 02:32, LuKreme wrote:
> It did not ship with it, it is easily added.  Saying "only read only  
> support exists" is simply wrong as r/w support quite definitely  
> exists for Leopard.

AFAIK it exists only directly as a download from other than  
Apple . . . and it's not (r/w support) included from Apple; so saying  
that only read-only support is certainly valid. Apple hasn't  
officially blessed it yet; and since the discussion is about using it  
either with or instead of Time Machine . . . it's unreasonable to  
really expect users to download, compile, and configure it via the  
command line.

OTOH, Apple will likely eventually include it . . . so getting a head  
start _for testing purposes_ only might be worthwhile.
>
> So, I'm confused.  You know r/w support exists yet you say it doesn't?

See above . . . I have no idea of support currently exists in any  
developer previews of 10.5.x . . . I heard that it was in some of the  
betas before Leopard's release but it's gone now . . . so yes, it's  
true that support doesn't exist. Support means that Apple officially  
says it's OK to use and it's got some kind of documentation that an  
end user could use to configure it. Hooks internally so that it can be  
added eventually doesn't mean support.

It may be that ZFS is the cat's meow . . . but in the long term most  
users care about it just about as much as they care about HFS+ . . .  
which is . . . "it's the format of the drive". If ZFS becomes  
available and has neat gizmo features through Disk Utility to use  
it . . . great; but what users care about is _using_ it for something  
useful. . . not having it just for the sake of having it.