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Date:      Mon, 17 Feb 2003 16:21:42 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
To:        Markie <markie@notwentytwo.freeserve.co.uk>
Cc:        Daxbert <daxbert_news@dweebsoft.com>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: rw on ntfs volume
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.4.44.0302171616550.27130-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: <001101c2d681$a38542a0$0a00a8c0@mrblossom>

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On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Markie wrote:

> You're right :) Sorry.
>
> file must be nonresident and must not contain any sparces (uninitialized
> areas);
>
> What does this mean? :) big words for a 17 year old :$

Nonresident: Bigger than a kilobyte :-) A "resident" file is an
optimisation. Roughly by analogy, it'd be like storing the contents of a
(small) file directly in the inode, rather than in data blocks pointed
to by the inode. Most files are likely to be nonresident. If you create
a file it'll be nonresident.

Most resident data appears to crop up using NTFS' "forked" file ability,
which isn't generally something you hear a lot about.

Not having any spaces: this is what's called a "sparse" file - eg, you
write some bytes, seek forward a gigabyte, and write some more. NTFS has
the ability to record this file with a "hole" in the middle, so it
doesn't require a GB of disk storage. Most files are unlikely to be
sparse.



-- 
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 http://ioctl.org/jan/
Axioms speak louder than words.


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