A company called Ten's Complement plans to bring ZFS to Mac OS X. The file system is now in beta testing.

In 2007, it was rumored that Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") would support ZFS (Zettabyte File System). ZFS was originally developed by Sun. It protects all files with 64-bit checksums to detect and fix data corruption and, as a 128-bit file system, can handle many orders of magnitude more space than current versions of Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. According to Sun, ZFS meets the needs of a file system for everything from desktops to data centers.

And according to a 2007 patent (number 20070112891) filed by Apple engineers, you can convert millions of computers to a new file system via a handy file system converter that changes the file system without touching the files. The patent could have theoretically made HFS to ZFS conversions fast and painless.

A note at the Ten's Complement site (http://info.tenscomplement.com/) says: "We're not quite there yet — but we have some exciting products in development.  Our version of ZFS for Mac OS X, Z-410 Storage, started external beta testing last week. Expect more announcements soon ... Our foundational release of ZFS for Mac OS X is targeted at early adopters and those who can't wait to combine the world's most innovative operating system with the world's most advanced file system."

-- Dennis Sellers