Author Topic: Best FAT32 driver settings  (Read 13118 times)

David Graser

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Best FAT32 driver settings
« on: February 09, 2018, 06:10:11 pm »
I am presently using the fat32-0.10-r331-os2 driver with ArcaOS and I have the following settings in my config.sys.

ifs=D:\OS2\BOOT\fat32.ifs /cache:2048 /h /q /ac:* /largefiles
call=D:\OS2\cachef32.exe /f /p:2 /m:50000 /b:250 /d:5000

I have plenty of hard drive space and 4 GB of RAM.

I want the fastest access to my FAT32 partition possible.  Can reading the drive be speed up by changing my IFS and Call statements and if so, to what?

Right now it takes approximately 40 seconds to bring up all the files on the drive.  Under Windows, it is almost instantaneous.  This drive contains a lot of graphics.  It has slowed Windows down to a few seconds to access.  This is a 34.4 GB drive with 23.4 GB used

Any suggestions?  Thanks!

David

Dave Yeo

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2018, 06:45:26 pm »
Try testing without the cache options including the call.

roberto

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2018, 10:05:04 pm »
Right now it takes approximately 40 seconds to bring up all the files on the drive.
Any virus? Check the hidden files.

Saludos

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2018, 01:08:16 am »
Try testing without the cache options including the call.

Did as you suggested.  Still 40 seconds to populate the screen with all files.  This is with FM/2.

Icon edit and PMView are faster.  However it looks they load whatever directory you are in and then the graphic files appear one at a time.

I can't believe it has a virus.  Windows populates the screen in seconds.

On a much older machine using eComstation 2 and the FAT32 driver, it takes over a minute to load the FAT32 drive.

Valery Sedletski

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2018, 03:43:28 am »
2David Graser: hi

I'm using

Quote
ifs=d:\os2\boot\fat32.ifs /cache:2048 /h /ac:* /largefiles /fat /exfat /eas /plus
call=d:\os2\cachef32.exe /f /p:2 /m:50000 /b:250 /d:5000

As far as I can see this is almost the same settings as you have, except for "/fat" for FAT12/FAT16 support, "/exfat" for exFAT support, "/eas" for EAs support, and "/plus" for support of files whose sizes are larger or equal than 4 GB. These are very useful switches, if you don't know. Also, I don't use FM/2, but use FC/2, I have a 1 TB FAT32 USB drive -- it works relatively fast (only needs to spin up first, as it goes to sleep usually). My 128 GB microSDXC card works fast too -- they both reread in a second or so, not 40 seconds, as you report. So, it is probably, specific somehow to FM/2, I'd suppose.

PS: Also, AFAICS, WPS opens these 128 GB and 1 TB drives faster than 40 s. It scans all directory structure for about 10 s (folder view), but just opening an icon view is fast -- 1-2 s. FC/2 does not scan whole directory structure each time, but FM/2 probably, does.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2018, 03:48:16 am by Valery Sedletski »

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2018, 05:26:57 am »
I tried your settings and am now getting an internal processing error at location
##1000:05b5 - 0003:05b5.
65535, 9051
FAT32: Error: Sector 7 does not exist on drive C:

128606a7
Internal revision 14.201_smp

The system is stopped. Record all of the above information and contact your service representative.


I am now going to add each switch one at time and see which one is causing the processing error.


David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2018, 05:48:34 am »
I tried your settings and am now getting an internal processing error at location
##1000:05b5 - 0003:05b5.
65535, 9051
FAT32: Error: Sector 7 does not exist on drive C:

128606a7
Internal revision 14.201_smp

The system is stopped. Record all of the above information and contact your service representative.

Testing has revealed that the /fat switch is the problem.  If left out of the statement, the FAT.IFS driver loads fine.

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2018, 06:15:29 am »
2David Graser: hi

I'm using

Quote
ifs=d:\os2\boot\fat32.ifs /cache:2048 /h /ac:* /largefiles /fat /exfat /eas /plus
call=d:\os2\cachef32.exe /f /p:2 /m:50000 /b:250 /d:5000

PS: Also, AFAICS, WPS opens these 128 GB and 1 TB drives faster than 40 s. It scans all directory structure for about 10 s (folder view), but just opening an icon view is fast -- 1-2 s. FC/2 does not scan whole directory structure each time, but FM/2 probably, does.

It appears that FM/2 is indeed the problem and only on FAT32 drives.  ZTreeBold brings the display up instantaneously.

Icon editor brings up the text fast and then brings up the graphical displays one at a time.   Same thing with PMView.  Text first and then   the picture for each file one pic at a time.  Even under text view, it makes no difference for FM/2.  it is no faster.

Valery, thank you for the additional switches and their excellent descriptions and your thoughts on what my problem might be!

David
« Last Edit: February 10, 2018, 06:23:10 am by David Graser »

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2018, 07:09:24 am »
Was using an earlier version of FM/2 3.20 on my eCS laptop.  Although not fast populating the screen, once populated, I could switch back and forth between drives and it was fast.  Something changed between 3.20 and version 3.24.

It appears to be more than the version numbers.  The slowest access time is coming from my multiprocessor notebook every time the FAt32 drive is accessed.  On the other single processor laptop, it is slow scanning, but once done, it is fast bringing up the FAT32 drive once it has been scanned for the first time.  This is not true for the notebook.  The scan time is the same no matter how many times it is accessed.

Tried PMView.  Same thing.  On the single processor laptop, the files do load faster than on the multiprocessor notebook.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2018, 08:24:00 am by David Graser »

Valery Sedletski

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2018, 10:52:25 am »
Strange. What filesystem has your disk C: ? It seems, it wrongly assumes this disk being FAT. The message

Quote
FAT32: Error: Sector 7 does not exist on drive C:

means that number of sectors on disk < 7 (usually 0). Also, please, check the newer version fat32.ifs, r332: ftp://osfree.org/upload/fat32/fat32-0.10-r332-os2.zip, I made some additional checks in FS_MOUNT, so it should not wrongly mount other file systems, than FAT/FAT32/exFAT.

PS: No idea, why it is slower on a SMP machine. Maybe, it needs some SMP optimisations, I did none so far. Did not noticed such effects on my SMP machines.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2018, 10:55:12 am by Valery Sedletski »

roberto

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2018, 01:22:14 pm »
I can't believe it has a virus.  Windows populates the screen in seconds.
To leave doubts, if it could be a virus. It's simple.
1-You can format from OS2 as fat32.
2- Copy reliable os2 files.
3- Try
a-If it works well, os2 is not the problem, and you should think about a windows virus.
b-If it does not work well, the problem is not a virus.
If the answer is (a)
Format the partition again, start windows and see what files the virus has copied to that partition.

I had a similar problem recently and it was a windows virus, which spread through all the fat32 partitions, when starting win.
saludos

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2018, 05:37:00 pm »
Strange. What filesystem has your disk C: ? It seems, it wrongly assumes this disk being FAT. The message

Quote
FAT32: Error: Sector 7 does not exist on drive C:

means that number of sectors on disk < 7 (usually 0). Also, please, check the newer version fat32.ifs, r332: ftp://osfree.org/upload/fat32/fat32-0.10-r332-os2.zip, I made some additional checks in FS_MOUNT, so it should not wrongly mount other file systems, than FAT/FAT32/exFAT.

The drive C was a NTFS partition.  Installed your latest driver, added the /Fat switch, rebooted, the the system booted up fine.  This version corrects the error.

To test something else , I tried the WPS drive objects on both machines.  It is almost just as slow as Fm/2.  I just thought of one other difference between the two machines.  One uses ArcaOS and the other uses eCS 2.0.  One other thing to test.

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2018, 06:01:19 pm »
I can't believe it has a virus.  Windows populates the screen in seconds.
To leave doubts, if it could be a virus. It's simple.
1-You can format from OS2 as fat32.
2- Copy reliable os2 files.
3- Try
a-If it works well, os2 is not the problem, and you should think about a windows virus.
b-If it does not work well, the problem is not a virus.
If the answer is (a)
Format the partition again, start windows and see what files the virus has copied to that partition.

I had a similar problem recently and it was a windows virus, which spread through all the fat32 partitions, when starting win.
saludos
I

I ran Kaspersky Antivirus over the FAT32 partition.  It found nothing.  I am beginning to believe it is the the way the WPS handles files.  Windows GUI must handle FAT32 files differently than the WPS.   

Doug Bissett

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #13 on: February 10, 2018, 08:43:19 pm »
Quote
Windows GUI must handle FAT32 files differently than the WPS.

Exactly. Windows has some way to skip to the icon at the end of EXE files, while the WPS scans through the whole file to find them. Using OS/2 EAs will help, on the second scan, but using EAs will cause problems because windows doesn't know about them, so they become disconnected, requiring a CHKDSK in OS/2 to fix the problems caused by windows file handling. The time that you save, by using EAs, won't be enough to make up for that.

One thing, that does speed things up, is to add a small OS/2 icon file, with the file name, for each EXE file. That way, OS/2 will use the small icon, rather than searching each EXE file for an icon. Windows just thinks it is another file, and ignores them.

David Graser

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Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
« Reply #14 on: February 11, 2018, 08:44:20 am »
I went into FM/2 settings and changed the scan settings to not load the system icons, but to use FM/2's default icons when loading the files.  FM/2 now comes up almost instantaneously using its default icons.  Thanks for all the suggestions I received.

David