Why an MFS partition

[Mjolinor]

Is there a technical reason for putting the recorded video into an MFS partition. Why not just save recordings as files in the normal Linux format.

In fact why not have the whole TiVo using normal file systems, I can't see an advantage in the MFS unless it was done to make it hard though I don't think that would be the case

Just wondered.

[21aloysius]

I will venture to speculate several reasons.

1. Another post mentioned that MFS was a type of JFS. I'm not sure if this is true but it would make sense. Journaling file systems are pretty hard to corrupt. The same can't be said for normal UNIX file systems.

2. There may be some advantage when it comes to streaming the recording and/or the playback. Different file systems can be tuned for different applications and that is most likely the driver here. The CPU in the Series 1 units is not powerful so they probably needed something that would have the lowest overhead and still allow them to stream data.

I don't think there was any serious intention of making it hacker unfriendly. It might have been listed as a feature after that fact and I would have to admit that it does raise the bar a little.

[dlang]

the default linux filesystem (ext2) starts to get sow when you have large files on it, especially when you start seeking to various points in the file (rewind for example)

as such it would make a particularly BAD filesystem to put large chunks of data on (and the 512M chunks that MFS uses do qualify as such, let alone the 5+G files that you could generate for longer movies)

[jetspies]

MFS also has design features to minimize fragmentation and enhance it's ability to survive a power outage at any given time.

Think about how long it takes to fsck a 40G filesystem -- would you want to wait 30minutes for your TiVo to fsck a couple of 100G drives? I don't think so....