lane@dalcs.UUCP (John Wright/Dr. Pat Lane) (02/20/88)
In article <3948@ihlpl.ATT.COM> figlik@ihlpl.UUCP (55242-Figlik,J.R.) writes: >In article <3093@cup.portal.com> truett@cup.portal.com writes: >>With regard to DOS being able to handle multiple partitions on a hard disk: >>... > >The MS-DOS "JOIN" command can take a disk and make it look as if it's a >directory on another disk. .... > This is a favorite trick of mine. Also, on systems which have only one hard disk partition, I use the DOS "SUBST" command to take a directory and make it look like another disk. ie. subst d: c:\work creates a fake drive D: whose root directory is the "work" subdirectory of C:. This directory is still acessable as "c:\work". Note that the subdirectory can be several levels down from the root and that the same subdirectory can be simultaneously SUBST'd to more than one drive. The subdirectory cannot, however, be on a SUBST'd drive (use it's pathname on the real drive). Advantages: Easy to implement and un-implement (no Fdisking and re-formatting). "Partition" sizes arn't fixed since it's all the same disk. Disadvantages: Doesn't break 32-Meg barrier and doesn't allow non-standard sector and cluster sizes as do the "disk enhancer" pgms. Doesn't provide protection against re-formatting or munging the FAT in one partition (with real partitions you'd at least have your other partitions intact). Ditto having a place to store stuff while you re-format a partition. Doesn't provide performance advantage of having fewer seeks (with two physical drives?) and minimizing file fragmentation. Some programs get confused. Norton's Utilities don't like SUBST'd drives including one's that shouldn't care, like "dirsort". As noted, even SUBST won't work on a subdirectory of a SUBST'd drive. There seems to be a bug in CHKDSK (IBM PC-DOS 3.20) where the "/f" parameter is ignorred if there is a SUBST'd directory on the drive. If you define a ram-disk or otherwise install a device driver in CONFIG.SYS that uses up a drive letter, you will have to use a different letter for your SUBST'd drive which is annoying. I'd like to hear from anyone with comments about the last three disadvantages. Regards, John Wright -- John Wright ////////////////// Phone: 902-424-3805 or 902-424-6527 Post: c/o Dr Pat Lane, Biology Dept, Dalhousie U, Halifax N.S., CANADA B3H-4H8 Cdn/Bitnet: lane@cs.dal.cdn Arpa: lane%dalcs.uucp@uunet.uu.net Uucp: lane@dalcs.uucp or {uunet,watmath,utai,garfield}!dalcs!lane
bill@wsccs.UUCP (Bill Housley) (03/02/88)
In article <2786@dalcs.UUCP>, lane@dalcs.UUCP (John Wright/Dr. Pat Lane) writes: > In article <3948@ihlpl.ATT.COM> figlik@ihlpl.UUCP (55242-Figlik,J.R.) writes: > > subst d: c:\work > For those of you that care, Netware by Novell does something similar and has their own command for it. I didn't test it extensively, but it fooled everything I ran (this does not include the one's you mentioned) including McGraw Hill's FRAMEWORK. You should see the drive list on the right going from a: to z: it's quite interesting. Kirk: But this planet is destroying it's self around us!!! Kruge: Invigerating, isn't it!! --------------------------------------------------------------------- UUCP !ihup!utah-cs!utah-gr!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!bill {WSC Utah} - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -