psc@lznv.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) (01/13/88)
In article <1989@houxa.UUCP>, egauss@houxa.UUCP (E.GAUSS) writes: > The store wants me to go to MS-DOS 3.2 which I may have to do but I want > to avoid for two reasons. . . . (2) Migration to 3.2 is is supposed > to require that I dump my hard disk, reformat it, and then restore > it, and this is a messy job that I would prefer to avoid. > > Ed Gauss, ...!ihnp4!houxa!egauss There are two concerns here: finding room for the BIOS.COM and DOS.COM hidden files, and the cluster size feature. There have been conflicting reports on how easy it is to put a new version of MS-DOS on a hard disk with SYS. (The two files have to be at the very beginning of your disk. Having tools like the Norton Utilities, the Mace Utilities, or PC Tools may help you make room there. I think the two files also have to be the first two entries in the root directory. If you upgrade to AT&T MS-DOS 3.2, you can repartion (and then reformat) your hard disk to use 2K clusters. A "cluster" is the smallest chunk of disk that DOS will allocate for a file. That means you'll waste 1K of disk per file on average (nearly 2K per small file), rather than 4K average (8K per small file) for a 20M hard disk under older versions of DOS. (Yes, this feature was available in version 3.1 of PC-DOS and many other companies' MS-DOS. Don't ask me, I just work here.) -Paul S. R. Chisholm, {ihnp4,cbosgd,allegra,rutgers}!mtune!lznv!psc AT&T Mail !psrchisholm, Internet psc@lznv.att.com I'm not speaking for my employer, I'm just speaking my mind.
ralph@mtunf.ATT.COM (Ralph Heredia) (01/13/88)
In article <1251@lznv.ATT.COM> psc@lznv.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) writes: >In article <1989@houxa.UUCP>, egauss@houxa.UUCP (E.GAUSS) writes: >> The store wants me to go to MS-DOS 3.2 which I may have to do but I want >> to avoid for two reasons. . . . (2) Migration to 3.2 is is supposed >> to require that I dump my hard disk, reformat it, and then restore >> it, and this is a messy job that I would prefer to avoid. >> This is only if you want to get the small cluster size. If you don't care about the size then you can just SYS over the files. Don't forget to copy command.com over to the hard disk also, cause SYS does not do this for you. -- Ralph Heredia EMAIL: ihnp4!mtunf!ralph or attmail!rheredia AT&T RM 3F-313,200 Laurel Ave. Middletown, NJ 07748 (201) 957-2567 Disclaimer: The above