mark@zach.fit.edu ( Mark R. Craig) (12/21/90)
I hope someone can help me with a problem I'm having. I decided to customise
my Workbench 1.3 disk (backup copy of course) by putting a lot of commonly
used commands in the c directory. Everything was going fine, I even put in
ConMan and Popcli. Everything was still fine (workbench disk just about full
though). Then I put 1 more command (history) into the c directory. It fit
fine (still just about full though). Now whenever I boot up with this disk,
at bootup, the disk drive seems to spin for a long time (and head noises as
if it's reading something) before anything is done. Even if I boot up with
another workbench disk (boots fine, BTW) and then put my customized
workbench disk in df1: it spins, etc. for about a minute or so. I know
there are things that are done whenever you put in a disk, but this pause
seems rediculous. BTW, there are now a lot of files in the c directory.
Also, BTW, I don't think the history command could be the problem (it's
fairly small).
If I can't speed up the workbench disk, I'll probably have to delete some
stuff I don't want to, so I hope someone can solve my problem.
Mark
Mark R. Craig
Internet: la086318@zach.fit.edu
UUCP: ...!winnie!zach!la086318colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) (12/21/90)
The solution is to use a disk reorganizer program. As a new amiga user, I just
went through this phase of having a full-featured workbench disk (~ 180 files
now), and it booted in 3mns, now it boots in 1mn! I tried many disk reorganizer
programs, and here are the result of my experiments:
WARNING: these tests are for floppies only. I didn't try these programs on Hard
disks, where they may perform better or worse!
Best one:
FastDisk 1.5 (fish disk 286). WARNING: Do not use FastDiskII, it only produced
corrupted disks on the 3 disks I tried. FastDisk 1.5 never gave me any problem.
Second Best one:
BAD (Blitz-A-Disk) a commercial program I tried, seems VERY robust and safe,
handles FFS and hard disk, but yielded a disk booting in 1'26", whereas fastdisk
1.5 gived 1'09". It is the fastest to process disks, though.
Good:
Disk-It. Commercial. Nice real-time map of what it does, same speeds as BAD
(only handles floppies). never corrupted my disks. BUT: does not multitask.
AVOID:
Disk mechanic: awfully slow, trashed my disks. (Commercial). A real sh*t.
Disk Arranger 1.2: detected link errors on sane (as far as disksalv, fixdisk,
discdoctor.. etc could tell) disks. Thus couldn't try it.
QuarterBack tools 1.2: perfect joke: trashes disks. (Commercial)
FastDiskII: Don't know why but trashed my disks (they would boot, but will
make random guru after some minutes) Suspect its use of Arp as source of
problems... Anybody knows the solution?
So, grab fish disk #286, or buy BAD (FastDisk only handles floppies, BAD is more
versatile)
Now, if somebody could post the same kind of reviews for disk (preferably
floppy) caches, I would be VERY grateful. I tried FaccII, but it didn't impress
me... But more of it in another post.
--
Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager
Internet: colas@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66
INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCElcline@sequent.com (Larry Cline) (12/22/90)
I have seen this happen when disks are absolutely full. What appears to be happening is the disk is validating before you can access it and there is no room for the OS to write this to the disk (guess at this point). To fix this I have gone in and removed some small files (usually only takes one) and re-inserted the disk. My favorite targets are the .info files created when you open a disk or drawer. Then you pop the disk out, wait for the icon to disappear and pop it back in. It will spin for a while (again) and then probably write the validation info to the disk. After that, it should act a little more normal. Another method to squeeze more info on a disk is to use PowerPacker which makes your executables (most - some executables don't work when PowerPacked) smaller. I can't comment too much on this since I have never actually used it. Larry -- Larry Cline lcline@sequent.sequent.com lcline@crg8.sequent.com ".sig! Contractors don't need no stinkin' .sig!!!"
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/23/90)
mark@zach.fit.edu ( Mark R. Craig) writes: > [the usual sad story of filling up a floppy and having it take forever to > "ready" every time it's inserted.] This may not be your problem, but the odds are good that you _exactly_ filled up the disk. Amy likes to have one block left to write some "validating" data about the disk (a bitstring with a "1" set for every sector in use, I think, but it doesn't matter). When you modify the disk, this information gets updated; that's what that little "late hit" is after you finish writing a file to the floppy; a short wait to make sure you're done, then a copy of the updated information from ram to floppy. If you exactly fill up the disk, Amy doesn't die, but you've overwritten the old, invalid block of information, and left nowhere to write the new one. So, when you put the disk back in, Ami has to look at the whole disk to rebuild this information, rather than just reading it in from the disk. Worse (I'm guessing here), I think it doesn't just read 80 tracks one after the other, which would be fairly fast and would sound different, but instead walks the entire directory tree to see which blocks are actually linked in; this is the worst case way to access an AmigaOS floppy, which is why it is so slow and noisy. The _reason_ it can't just read 80 tracks in a row is that old sectors for deleted files aren't zeroed out in AmigaOS, so looked at one by one they'd still seem to be in use; this is why DiskSalve can sometimes recover a deleted file. Short solution: take something off your workbench disk to free up at least one block. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
dsg@cci632.UUCP (David Greenberg) (12/27/90)
A word of warning about BAD. (I haven't read ahead to see if there are any replys....but I will post anyway!) I purchased BAD, and tried it on my 80 MEG Seagate w/Kronos controller The disk was partitioned into 2 partitions the main DH0:, was the boot partition and DH1: was just mounted. DH1: optimized fine, but DH0: was trashed!!!!! ....... I repartitioned and created a .5meg boot partition and then BAD worked fine on DH0: **** WARNING: If using a Kronos (CLTD) controller....DO NOT OPTIMIZE the BOOT PARTITION **** Unless this is just a glitch....I don't know???!?? Dave
yorkw@stable.ecn.purdue.edu (Willis F York) (01/09/91)
bjames@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU (Binoy James [890904]) writes: >The MS-DOS world came out with something like Powerpacker..... PK-lite! Can Powerpacker cause Problems? I've been crashing a lot lately and i wonder if it's because of the Powerpacked Prog's i've been using.. Could a "VIRUS" get onto the end of a powerpacked prog and get "Unpacked" (provided the virus attached After the prog got PP'd) and when it got Unpacked it'd be gibberish. So the Virus would cause a Crash (Random Op codes). If the virus was there and GOT ppacked then it'd be undetectiable by programs that look aT program code. (It's just that i "Crash" after ANY warmboot and i can't Figer out WHY!) (I'm reaching here) . -- yorkw@ecn.purdue.edu Willis F York ---------------------------------------------- Macintosh... Proof that a Person can use a Computer all day and still not know ANYTHING about computers.