[pmmail-list] PMMailW crashes -corrupting DropBoxes

[Tim Roberts]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 11:40:57 -0500, Hazen Woods wrote:
>
>Recent changes.  A few months ago I changed HardDrives and increased 
>the partition sizes.  The partition on which PMMail is located is 5 GB.
>Some say the limit for pinball is 4 GB, but I think it is actually 8GB.  

Just because you think it doesn't make it so.  In fact, HPFS uses 32-bit 
fields to hold sizes and pointers.  That means it has a limit of 4 GB, and as 
soon as you try to write a file beyond 4 GB, your partition will be trashed.

HPFS should be used on NT ONLY if you need dual-boot with OS/2.  Otherwise, 
it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

>Others on this and other sites (maybe you are one of them) suggest a 
>better solution than pinball is to change from HPFS to FAT32.  Do you have
>any suggestions as to where to read up on the pros and cons of FAT32?  

The fundamental "pro" of FAT32 is that a partition can be up to 2 terabytes.  
It's a bit slower than FAT16, but not so that a human can detect it.

If you boot nothing but NT/2K/XP on this box, I strongly recommend you go to 
NTFS.  It is faster, more efficient, and more secure than FAT, and because it 
is a journalling file system, it is SIGNIFICANTLY more resistant to 
corruption due to crashes than ANY of the other choices.

Here's a file system flow chart:

  if (Need to dual-boot with Win95) then
    * use FAT 16, limit partitions to 524MB
  else if (Need to dual-boot with Win98 or Linux) then
    * use FAT 32
  else if (Need to dual-boot with OS/2) then
    * use HPFS, limit partitions to 4 GB
  else
    * use NTFS

--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


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