Why PS4 need "Checkdisk" every dirty shutdown?

[orangpelupa]

Hello,
my electricity is not good so its often PS4 got "dirty shutdown". But why everytime it need to do checkdisk?

on my x360, it never do checkdisk at all. and if there's unfinished download, it will resume normally. if theres corrupted data, it will simply shown as "corrupted" on memory management menu.

im also curious, do X1 also do checkdisk like PS4? or its like x360 without checkdisk?

thanks

 

[homerdog]

Can't answer your question, but on a related note, does the PS4 or Xbox 1 support smart shutdown from a compatible UPS? I have brownout issues at home so I rely on that when I'm away and my PC is idling.

 

[BRiT]

Never seen any sort of check disk on the Xbox one.

As for why PS4 does that, its just how Sony have programmed it to behave.

 

[Globalisateur]

Hello,
my electricity is not good so its often PS4 got "dirty shutdown". But why everytime it need to do checkdisk?

on my x360, it never do checkdisk at all. and if there's unfinished download, it will resume normally. if theres corrupted data, it will simply shown as "corrupted" on memory management menu.

im also curious, do X1 also do checkdisk like PS4? or its like x360 without checkdisk?

thanks

I think you have already given some elements of the answer.

Sony probably doesn't want to allow any corrupted data on their system. It was already the same on PS3 anyway.

 

[MrFox]

Usually, it's to clear up the journal, which is necessary for any modern file system (it's usually done in background, and feels just a few seconds more to boot). The bare minimum would only take a second or two, but maybe Sony executes a complete metadata check just to be safe. There are cases where it's necessary to avoid corruption, it is very common with consumer drives where the write cache state of the drive itself is unknown (the drive lies). So that's important for a system where the internal drive is replaceable, they can't know the cache behaviour of the new or future drives.

There are many compromises with file systems. I think it's possible the drawback of having to check the file system more extensively after a power failure was a compromise that allowed more operating performance. The more safety features they enable, the more it will eat up on CPU or random performance, or sequential performance, etc...

I wonder if that could help explain the install times differences between PS4 and XB1?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Presumably the full answer is in FreeBSD as its filesystem.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

That'd be UFS unless it's something unusual. I reckon it's something unusual but probably made to appear like UFS.

Just a hunch knowing Sony's love for esoteric security through obscurity practices.

 

[MrFox]

Yeah, I think it's definitely using UFS. It's sure Sony must use another layer for encryption, but the only fsck mentioned in their license disclosure was fsck_ufs. It makes sense.

http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/
http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_fsck.html

fsck_ufs
Copyright (c) 2002 Juli Mallett. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2003 Juli Mallett. All rights reserved.

 

[Scott_Arm]

You should get a UPS. It'll save you a lot of problems if there's something the journal cannot recover for some reason.

If you just get blips and brownouts, it shouldn't require anything expensive for a low power device like that.

 

[Gradthrawn]

You should get a UPS. It'll save you a lot of problems if there's something the journal cannot recover for some reason.

If you just get blips and brownouts, it shouldn't require anything expensive for a low power device like that.

Inexpensive UPSes typically supply simulated (stepped, square, etc) sinewave output when running off battery rather than pure sinewave like the more expensive units typically do (I'm obviously generalizing here). Whether that has any negative impact of note to a device like a console or TV is a different question. Further, which is more detrimental to the health of those electronic devices (simulated sinewave or unexpected shutdowns and interment power) is also a separate question and one probably worth asking. Just something to consider.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Inexpensive UPSes typically supply simulated (stepped, square, etc) sinewave output when running off battery rather than pure sinewave like the more expensive units typically do (I'm obviously generalizing here). Whether that has any negative impact of note to a device like a console or TV is a different question. Further, which is more detrimental to the health of those electronic devices (simulated sinewave or unexpected shutdowns and interment power) is also a separate question and one probably worth asking. Just something to consider.

Interesting. Didn't know that. Off hand, I don't know what the answer to that question would be.

 

[orangpelupa]

my x1 and pc has no problem at all living without UPS .. so i did not think it was a problem (xbox never complain about dirty shutdown).

but now with PS4... that is expensive AND did not have easily replaceable PSU... hmm. i agree with you guys, i think i need to get UPS.

 

[MrFox]

There's absolutely no reason to get a UPS for PS4 if you don't think you need it for XB1 or PC.

 

[Scott_Arm]

my x1 and pc has no problem at all living without UPS .. so i did not think it was a problem (xbox never complain about dirty shutdown).

but now with PS4... that is expensive AND did not have easily replaceable PSU... hmm. i agree with you guys, i think i need to get UPS.

Do you have power outages or brown outs?

Is it possible your PS4 has an issue? Are you using the original drive? Just wondering if the disk could be bad, or something like that. HDDs aren't the most reliable devices in the world.

Maybe your PC and Xbox One are also having issues, but they're hidden from you? I'm not sure if Xbox One would show you if it was repairing the file system. I have no idea what the behaviour is. I'm also not familiar with Windows 7/8 to know if you'll get a screen that tells you the disk is being checked.

If you think the power is unstable and causing issues, I'd probably get a UPS with power surge protection and use it for all of your valuable electronics. Why risk the others?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I had a rare power outage yesterday that killed my PC mid use. When power returned, Windows 7 booted up normally without even the complaint that it wasn't turned off properly that XP used to guilt you with. The only anomaly was a notification to report an error. Prior to this, I used a laptop with built in UPS - they're excellent like that. Just bad value for quiet, performance hardware.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I had a rare power outage yesterday that killed my PC mid use. When power returned, Windows 7 booted up normally without even the complaint that it wasn't turned off properly that XP used to guilt you with. The only anomaly was a notification to report an error. Prior to this, I used a laptop with built in UPS - they're excellent like that. Just bad value for quiet, performance hardware.

Windows 7's implementation of NTFS uses control bits in the file system to signify start and stop of write operations. When a write op starts a bit is set high and when a write ops ends it's cleared.

When windows boots it checks this bit and if it's high it knows the machine shut down mid-write and will initiate a check disk.

Olds as the hill idiot-proof technology.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Windows 7's implementation of NTFS uses control bits in the file system to signify start and stop of write operations. When a write op starts a bit is set high and when a write ops ends it's cleared.

When windows boots it checks this bit and if it's high it knows the machine shut down mid-write and will initiate a check disk.

Olds as the hill idiot-proof technology.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner.

So how does it work in BSD? Just wondering if it's possible that windows is smarter about knowing when to check disk. I thought the journaling file systems of BSD should do pretty much the same thing.

Might be a good idea for him to put all of his devices on a UPS with a surge protector, but I wouldn't rule out a disk problem on the PS4 if he never sees issues on the other devices.

 

[orangpelupa]

what is burnout?

btw my pc also almost never complain when the power out.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So how does it work in BSD? Just wondering if it's possible that windows is smarter about knowing when to check disk. I thought the journaling file systems of BSD should do pretty much the same thing. Might be a good idea for him to put all of his devices on a UPS with a surge protector, but I wouldn't rule out a disk problem on the PS4 if he never sees issues on the other devices.

It'll depend on the filesystem and I'm not familiar with UFS (if that is indeed what OrbisOS uses), we use ZFS.

But I imagine that whatever PS4 uses has at least this minimal error detection capability. Why the PS4 does it all the time is a mystery. It could just be writes happen more often - virtual memory usage, game saves (some games do save a lot compared to last gen), background downloading or the filesystem may have been performing background defragmentation.

Maybe that's why they removed the HDD activity LED

 

[MrFox]

I'm not familiar with UFS either (I'm an insufferable XFS fanboy), but I'm reading about and it has a very peculiar data integrity method called Soft Updates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_updates

It always require an fsck after a crash for garbage collection. It has to reclaim block that were allocated but never used. It specifically allows storage leaks, and recovering them requires a complete traversal of the metadata and that would be why it takes more time than other FS. I'm still of the opinion that UFS gave Sony a faster performance and less overhead, in exchange for longer crash recovery (but still a similar data integrity).

OTOH, NTFS can recover quickly because:
1. It has only a journal to playback after a crash, not the entire structure to count
2. Partitions have a "dirty" flag that is aggressively turned off after a write sync, allowing to skip the check most of the time
3. The journal playback is fast enough that it doesn't have to tell. No scary message necessary.