Read this at macrumors and wow...this does sound interesting! I'm surprised nobody else brought this up? Anyone else read this article?<br><br>http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/12/20061218164012.shtml<br><br>I didn't know what it was until I read this entry that was linked at MacRumors:<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>"You have 1 hard drive right? You are running out of space. You go buy another drive. You want to add it to the system but now you have to decide whether you want that drive to just handle storage of files, and if so which files? Well, how about this instead? You can add the drive as a pool. It then "magically" appears as if your original drive is now x gigabytes larger than it is since it is using two drives as a pool. Convenient no?<br><br>Or how about you want to backup that drive instead? Ok, add a drive to the system. Add it to the pool, tell it to mirror the drive instead. It now copies the data from one drive to the other and any changes mirror the other. If a corrupt file is on drive 1 (your original working copy) it checks the other to see if the backup is non-corrupt. If so, it opens that file, and copies the good data to the original drive as good data. It does this with Checksums of the files.<br><br>Another for the geekiness factor is RAIDZ. One drive or two can be a parity drive. Ever use PAR files? Yup very similar. You have files or a whole drive disappear? You can pretty much restore it from the parity drive if enough of the data still exists, etc. <br><br>Or how about you like having "versions" of your filesystem. You're about to update OS X to 10.5.2 and you're afraid it might break your system. So you create a ZFS snapshot. It now olds this "snapshot" of your filesystem and the files in it. You install the new update, it does indeed bork your computer. So you tell OS X and ZFS to use a previous snapshot, boom. You're back to 10.5.1 and it works. <br><br>Also the idea of using ZFS with time machine, is really really cool. Also, on the fly compression of your files. With no real performance hit. Another neat one is built in encryption. So you'll be able to have file vault at the filesystem level rather than the OS X application/OS level."<p><hr></blockquote><p> wow! I suppose this is how Time Machine will work? This alone makes 10.5 worth upgrading...and then you have Time Machine, Spaces, etc plus 3 or 4 secret things!<br><br>

Sounds very useful. I can see that the new stuff on 10.5 will require gobs and gobs of HD space, though, preferrably internal.<br><br>____________________________________________________<br>Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,<br>But to be young was very heaven!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by yoyo52 on 12/19/06 10:33 AM (server time).</EM></FONT></P>

Sounds great in theory... but for my taste, there's just too much that I'm "trusting" the system/hardware to do. I would rather have an app just back up folders to another drive where I can actually SEE the folders and files on the drive.<br><br>Geez, I guess I'm getting too old for these fancy new widgamabobs!<br><br>CreativeGuy for daily tips, tricks and commentary on all things graphic design.

That's the thing....you don't have to use this format apparently.<br><br>

Silverkeeper. <br><br>

Well, I'm in the same walker as you, old-timer. There are just some things you still wanna be able to see, feel, smell, touch, do manually. Too much automation can also mean too little control over your stuff.<br><br>Ah dang! My modem's slowing down. Gimme hand with this crank, will ya? <br><br>

Sounds like it is similar to sgis old XFS.<br><br>

Good point, but you'll eventually come around when you have enough space for BOTH.<br><br>The idea (at least for me) will be to let the system do all the cool backup stuff for convenience, but to still have an external cloning of my system and user folder for meltdowns. Hopefully it will be easy to clone those two things without their respective redundancies. <br><br>

I hope ZFS does become at least an option in 10.5 It should be much faster. HFS+ is not the most effecient file system out there, especially with everything they have bolted on to it over the years. The mac badly needs a modern effecient filesystem to keep up with the rest of the OS. Whether or not that ends up being ZFS remains to be seen<br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>THOMAS FITZGERALD:DIGITAL ARTIST&MAC BLOGGER