Software
Apple Gives Hint About ZFS for Leopard
Mac OS X “Leopard” preview package raises expectations that its release will come late this month.
Developers have received from Apple a “ZFS on Mac OS X Preview 1.1″ package, which offers preliminary support for the ZFS file system, originally developed by Sun Microsystems for their Solaris OS.
Currently, the Mac OS is based on the HFS+ file system, but leaked screenshots of earlier versions of Leopard showed options for formatting hard drives for ZFS.
Reportedly, this preview allows full read and write capabilities with the latest developer build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple’s upcoming version of its OS X operating system.
Developers have yet to see Apple’s final plans for ZFS; there is some question as to whether Apple has any long-term plan for the file system at all, from supporting communication with ZFS-based systems to replacing the base file system. And there is currently no information about how to ensure backward compatibility between ZFS-based and existing Mac applications and systems.
ZFS is said to offer a number of potential advantages over various other file systems. One feature, called “disk scrubbing”, could pre-empt latent disk errors. ZFS should also provide more efficient input and output, unlimited “snapshots” for quick backups and restores and the ability to read and write to compressed file systems.
