What techniques for disk, volume and file system management are possible with OS X, but troublesome within Disk Utility?
Subjective questions such as How would you redesign X? are not a good fit – see the links, within the question, to Discussion in Ask Different Chat. So my question there is borderline and may eventually be closed (fair enough).
Where is this going?
Two directions:
- the wish for a redesign of Disk Utility
- the wish for an alternative app, with a graphical user interface, that can do – with disks on OS X – what Disk Utility can not.
As (a) is beyond our control, so (b) may come first and for alternatives to Apple's app, I encourage open source.
In my experience, Apple does listen carefully to feedback. Whilst we can neither control a redesign of Disk Utility nor set a schedule for Apple, we can offer facts and reasons to guide the thinking of the company.
Back to the question in Ask Different. I have:
- only limited experience with ZFS
- almost no experience with other file systems that are (a) usable with OS X but (b) not natively supported by Apple.
So … I can think about design, but my perspective is limited and if a redesign of Disk Utility is to happen:
- the redesign must be broad, and as close as possible to future-proof.
Which other file system communities might we poll on this OS X-oriented subject?
The first that come to mind are:
- ext2 and similar
- NTFS
How wide should the net be cast?
Or can the thoughts of ZEVO and MacZFS communities encompass everything that might in the future be required from a disk utility?
Thoughts please – many thanks.
(I'll also seed this topic with a few design examples.)
Cross-post to zfs-macos for MacZFS: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/zfs-m ... discussion