Talk:Macintosh File System

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Incorrections[edit]

The articles states that MFS only supports 20Mb disks, however the specification allows up to 256Mb. It also says it has a value in an Apple Partition Map, and I'm not so sure about it. Anyone checked? —Claunia 18:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to [1], for the Partition Map Entry Record the pmParType field (which contains a string that identifies the partition type) can contain the string Apple_MFS which means "Partition uses the original Macintosh File System (64K ROM version)." I cannot find info on the maximum MFS volume size (either theoretical or in practice). 131.103.137.125 22:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MFS gives a disk a maximum of 4096 allocation blocks, and uses a 32-bit integer to store the size of each block. So theoretically, the maximum disk size should be 65535 * 4096 bytes, which is approximately 256 MiB (although in this case, the minimum size of each file would be 64 KiB!).
However, when I try formatting a 300 MiB disk image under System 1.1 or System 2.0 in Mini vMac, I end up with a partition that appears to be approximately 12368 KiB large. Whether this is a limitation of the Finder or something else, I'm not sure. — CharlesJS (talk) 06:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Filename character limits[edit]

As far as I know, no Finder that supported writing to MFS (7.6 and before) supporting making filenames longer than 31 characters. Also, HFS+ (or Mac OS Extended) under the Finder in Mac OS X supports up to 255 characters. So, the claimed 63 character limit for the Finder (in general) is inaccurate. (I do not believe there ever was a 63 character limit Finder.)

Tested with Finder 1.0?
Please sign your comments.
Claunia 20:58, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No. But I tested with Finder 1.1g. Seems I was wrong. There is also, if the Finder is to be believed, a 27 character limit imposed on application and disk names. 204.42.25.149 04:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the Finder is to be believed xD. Just the Toolbox APIs and the File Manager, as documented in Inside Macintosh. E.g. in Mac OS 9 any app can use APIs to write filenames up to 255 chars in HFS+, but the Finder will still see only 31. About the volume name, it is smaller in both MFS and HFS than the filename limit but I don't remember the exact limit.
Claunia 09:04, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Did some more experimenting. It seems (at least) as of System 3/Finder 5.1, the Finder implements its 31 character limit (it still says 27 for application and disk names) on both MFS and HFS disks. System 3/Finder 5.1 matches the System Folder that shipped with the Mac Plus when first shipped. 204.42.16.173 00:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MFS read/write capabilities[edit]

The infobox says, "System 1 — System 7.5.5 (Write), System 8 (Read)" for supported operating systems. Yet the article says, "In Mac OS 7.6.1, Apple removed support for writing to MFS volumes, and in Mac OS 8 support for MFS volumes was removed altogether." Which is right? 204.42.17.253 01:39, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, both are correct. The article should probably read 7.6, rather than 7.6.1; but the MacOS development tree for Version 7 wasn't totally linear. See this for further information. 98.252.120.81 (talk) 08:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dablink[edit]

Yes, I know "MFS file system" is an example of RAS syndrome. I just thought the alternative would have been even sillier: "This article is about the file system called the Macintosh File System. For other Macintosh file systems..." - (), 06:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Macintosh File System. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:47, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]