Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Sure. I was just wondering if ext2 does anything special with small 
> files, that's all.

Right. It could, for example, pack data from multiple small files into one 
sector/block/whatever. But i-nodes are too small for that.

> putting that data inside the directory itself,

Now you're talking about directories, which are different from i-nodes. And 
no, if you put the data in the directory, then you couldn't have multiple 
links to a small file.

> Then again, I've sometimes wondered what would happen if you had some 
> filesystem that split the disk into several seperate regions with 
> different block sizes, and allocated files accordingly. (I.e., put the 
> really huge files in the area with big blocks, and the tiny files in 
> some area with tiny block sizes.) I rather suspect you'd permanently be 
> running out of whichever size you happen to need the most tho...

And interesting thought. I've never seen that done.  Given that disks are 
broken into sectors all the same size, and given that the only reasons for 
allocating space in units larger than one sector are defragmentation and 
efficiency of storing pointers to clusters, there's no real good reason for it.

On the other hand, the Amiga formatted the floppy track every time it wrote 
the track, so you could probably actually fit more large files on a disk 
than small files, even if every small file was exactly one sector, by making 
the sectors physically larger on tracks where they store a big file.


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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