OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: David Graser on February 09, 2018, 06:10:11 pm

Title: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: Dave Yeo on February 09, 2018, 06:45:26 pm
Try testing without the cache options including the call.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: roberto 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
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: Valery Sedletski 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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.

Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: Valery Sedletski 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: roberto 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
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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.   
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: Doug Bissett 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.
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: David Graser 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
Title: Re: Best FAT32 driver settings
Post by: Valery Sedletski on February 11, 2018, 10:28:36 am
2David Graser: Ok, so it looks like the problem was with icons. Indeed, in FC/2, with no GUI, I don't observe any delays or waits to populate the directory.

BTW, I also uploaded new version r333, where I removed OBJ_ANY in DosAllocMem (which prevented CHKDSK to start), so now CHKDSK should work ok.

Also, in last versions (it was in November), I added new cool feature: now fat32.ifs can mount FS images, laying on any other file system. The images can be simple diskette images, RAW harddisk images (partition images, or whole hard disk images), VM images (e.g., VPC images, now readonly, yet). Supported VM image formats are Raw/bochs/cloop/dmg/vpc/vmdk/parallels/vvfat/qcow. I ported the image access library from QEMU, you just use the f32mount.exe utility, to mount them. Now cachef32.exe contains code to read sectors from VM images. The IFS calls cachef32.exe, to read sectors, so that, the code for reading images is run in a usermode process. You can mount images like this:

Quote
f32mount win98.dsk <directory on a FAT drive>

-- this will mount a diskette image, or,

Quote
f32mount win98.vhd dir1 /p:1

-- this will mount a win98.vhd VPC image to dir1 subdirectory, "/p:1" selects a primary partition in this HDD image. Numbers 1-4 specify primary partitions, 5-... specify logical partitions. Also, you can specify an optional header size as "/o:<size>", if your filesystem starts at offset <size> from the beginning of the image. "/p:..." and "/o:..." options can be combined, if you have a header before the partition table. Note that such way, you can mount any FAT12/FTA16/FAT32/exFAT partition image to a subdirectory on another FAT12/FAT16/FAT32/exFAT drive.

Also, (this feature is unfinished and alpha-quality, yet) you can mount an image to a subdirectory, and run CHKDSK/FORMAT against the mountpoint. To specify a mountpoint, you use the following syntax:

Quote
chkdsk d: /m:<path to mountpoint> [/f]

So, d: will be ignored, and <path to mountpoint> will be checked instead. It is done this way, because you cannot pass a directory to chkdsk/format (only a driveletter), so we pass a directory as a separate parameter, instead. And likewise, for format (the same "/m:..." parameter). But I don't recommend to use format on a mountpoint this time, yet, because this feature is not finished, and it can corrupt the image.

Does anybody want to try these features? ;)