/Spam/ [Xitami] Xitami performance regarding directory structures

[Brian {Hamilton Kelly}]

In message <5.1.0.14.2.20050608184435.01f5ed10@verfaillie4.verfaillie.local>
   Marc Doigny writes:

> XP does a lot more than just displaying the files.
> For instance, it creates an alternate stream for each image file, 
> containing a thumbnail of the image. FAT-32 files don't have streams, so 
> there is less processing involved.

Do Microsoft really use the name "stream" for this?  It seems an
unfortunate (and misleading) ambiguity, given that "streams" already gets
used for multi-processing activity [within an application] and also for
"the contents of a file in the file system".

Surely what you describe here is akin to Mac's "resource fork"?  OS/2
(and eComStation) use EAs (extended attributes) for the same
functionality.  (NTFS still includes support for OS/2 EAs.)

> FAT-32 is a leaner file system, but it's less robust, and slower for 
> directories with lots of files. NTFS suffer less performance degradation 
> when files are getting fragmented.

If Microsoft had stuck with HPFS (to which they still own source rights)
instead of inventing the inferior NTFS for their OS/3, there wouldn't be
any question of fragmentation, since HPFS avoids it entirely.

-- 
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}                                     bhk@dsl.co.uk
         "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu
         le loisir de la faire plus courte."
                             Blaise Pascal, /Lettres Provinciales/, 1657