14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Mac OS and Windows Vista are approaching the final sprint before the launch, and as rumors say, they are going to use two file systems completely different when compared to what they've been using so far. Although I am a Windows/Mac user, I don't have any plans to move on and upgrade to Vista, and the future operating system from Microsoft is not my concern now. Since rumors that got to my ears recently say that the new Mac OS X "Leopard" is going to use ZFS, I think that the best thing to do now is find out more about this file system, don't you think?
ZFS is an open source file system produced by Sun Microsystems to be used by its Solaris Operating System, and its main attributes are the high capacity, integration of the filesystem and volume management concepts, novel on-disk structure, lightweight file systems and easy storage pool management. Despite the advanced concepts it incorporates, this file system is really young, being introduced in November 2005. Now that we know some things about ZFS, let's get back to our Apples, shall we?
When moving on to a new file system, you have to get some advantages over the previous one to worth the time and large amount of work involved in this. HFS+, Mac OS X's current file system has journaling, it supports arbitrary extensible metadata, and if you really care about the case sensitive file names, HFS+ can even be case sensitive. So... why change it? Well, think about the fact that HFS is an excellent file system released 21 years ago, and its improved version, HFS+, is 8 years old. There's no need to say how long that is in the IT world...
Adding ZFS to Mac OS X will bring improved data integrity that uses checksums on all data and snapshots to your Mac, as well as logical volume management through a pooled storage model and efficient storage and handling of very small files.
The rumors of the day? ZFS support is being built into Mac OS X "Leopard" right as we speak, and in the near future we should expect much more interesting facts about this, because at this time there's nothing more to say than "stay tuned for more news"!