stevec@hub.toronto.edu (Stephen Curran) (07/28/88)
There is an ad in the August '88 Byte (pg. 223) for a PC card that
does data compression "on the fly", to double the effective size of
your hard disk. They claim the board operates "without loss of
performance". The operation is totally transparent, all files are
compressed and uncompressed, and, since DOS doesn't really know about
it, the 32MB barrier can be effectively surpassed (ie. can still only
use a 32MB partition, but since all the data is compressed, it can
hold 64MB). And the price is pretty good -- $189US.
A couple of questions I have:
- what exactly does "without loss of performance" mean? My guess is
that disk access times would be of much greater magnitude than the
compress/uncompress time, but would there be any noticeable effect?
- Is a 50% compression ratio realistic to expect from the mix of files
on a normal hard disk?
- Does the card work with non-DOS partitions (ie. MINIX)?
- What happens to the 4k disk block size of your hard disk? My guess
is that a great number of files are less than 4k -- especially ASCII
files. Is there any special handling done to either reduce the block
size or to pack files closer together? If not, a lot of files will
be compressed without benefit.
- they say some software is involved...is that on installation, or
normal operation? If for normal operation...how much space does it
require?
Has anyone used or heard any details about this card? I would like more
information, but for now would rather not pay :-), so I was hoping
someone else would be interested enough to call. Their number is:
1-800-332-0456 (I can't call this number from Canada)
or, if you live in the La Crescenta Ca. area (where??), the local
number is:
818-248-8780
Thanks for any help
...stevec
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BITNET: stevec@hub.utoronto (may not work from all sites)stevec@hub.toronto.edu (Stephen Curran) (07/28/88)
In article <8807281241.AA15269@hub.toronto.edu> stevec@hub.toronto.edu (Stephen Curran) writes: > > [Stuff about a card that does on the fly file compression/uncompression> > to increase the capacity of a hard disk.] > >Has anyone used or heard any details about this card? I would like more >information, but for now would rather not pay :-), so I was hoping >someone else would be interested enough to call. Their number is: > 1-800-332-0456 (I can't call this number from Canada) >or, if you live in the La Crescenta Ca. area (where??), the local >number is: > 818-248-8780 > >Thanks for any help > >...stevec OOOOooops...forgot to say... the company is DATRAN Corp., and the product is called the DiskDoubler dd2000. It is a short card that fits in any XT-type slot. UUCP: {decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsri!uthub!stevec ARPA: stevec%hub.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net CSNET: stevec@hub.toronto.edu CDNNET: stevec@hub.toronto.cdn BITNET: stevec@hub.utoronto (may not work from all sites)