wordproc@ucf-cs.UCF.EDU (wordproc) (01/06/90)
/* ---------- "RE: hard disk de-fragmenter" ---------- */ > I strongly disagree with the use of PCTools. One late night as my bbs ran its > timed event, pctools decided to totally screw up the entire users-file. There > was no apparent reason for this act, no breaks or power-inturrupts, and the > dos error level was gnarley! If you value your disk's contents- just say no > to PCTools! > > However, I highly recommend the Norton Utilities Advanced Edition 4.50 > > Mark Solsman I use NU's Speed Disk disk optimizer on a fairly regular basis and it truly is outstanding, at least on my 286/20MHz machine with a 110-Meg hard drive set up as a single C: partition. It really is very fast, as well, and has worked flawlessly for me. ___________________________________________________________________ _________ / Marcus Clenney ___ ___ /___ ___/ ________ / U. of Central Florida / | / | / / / ______/ / Dept. of Computer Science / /| | / /| | / / / / / Orlando, FL 32816 / / | |/ / | | / / / /_____ / wordproc@ucf-cs.ucf.edu /_/ |___/ |_| /_/ /_______/ / ____________________________________________________________/
kji@vpnet.UUCP (Ken Isacson) (01/09/90)
Regarding the use of PCTOOLS vs Norton Speed Disk. Defrag your booting hard drive, and time your boot process, especially if you have quite a few of commands and such the get executed in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Then switch to the other program, and defrag your disk, and time your boot process. I found that it took 27 seconds for boot with the use of PCTools compress and it took only 20 seconds for boot with the use of Norton Speed Disk as the hard drive compression method.
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) (01/16/90)
>Defrag your booting hard drive, and time your boot process, especially >if you have quite a few of commands and such the get executed in your >CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Then switch to the other program, and >defrag your disk, and time your boot process. > >I found that it took 27 seconds for boot with the use of PCTools compress >and it took only 20 seconds for boot with the use of Norton Speed Disk >as the hard drive compression method. This does not strike me as a valid test. The boot programs are uneffected by either compression programs. In addition the state of the hard disk has to be EXACTLY THE SAME IN BOTH TESTS for the results to be valid. Doing one first and then the other without first restoring the hard disk EXACTLY would make the second test invalid. For example, Norton relocates config.sys. PCTools will then find config.sys in an entirely different location than Norton because Norton moved it from its original location. Even if Norton and PCTools were exactly alike in their relocation algorithm, PCTools will now give a different result. Assuming the tests were properly done, what is effected is the files config.sys, autoexec.bat and the files referenced in those two files. The location of those programs on the hard disk is what is effected. If all the files are located in wide scattered places then the boot up time will increase. For either program to avoid this problem they would have to know that these files are used together and should be placed together on the hard disk to minimize seeking. Neither programs does this so the placement of the files is basically random. This means that with a different fragmentation the Norton could just as well give the longer boot time. Danny Low Sunnyvale Personal Computer Division dlow@hpspcoi ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow HP4200/29 720-3622