[comp.sys.amiga] DiskSalv ... memory usage.

consult@aucs.UUCP (Student Consultant) (05/24/89)

I won't be able to see any replies, but....

I successfully used DiskSalv to get all files off a floppy with a circular
directory entry, which is nice because the other versions of DS seemed to
mess up quite badly with this. However, it took me 6 passes to do it.
DiskSalv was taking all of the 350K of memory I still had left. I used the
option for using less memory and I restored from one disk to another. Is
it supposed to be this memory hungry? For those of us (probably rare people)
that still have 512K Amigas *shudder*, DS, though a saviour, is a chore to use.
Am I doing something wrong or is there an assumption that 1M mem is standard
now?


...Bill
-------------
Bill Nickerson
P.O. Box 459
Barrington Passage, NS
Canada         B0W 1G0

daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (05/25/89)

in article <1901@aucs.UUCP>, consult@aucs.UUCP (Student Consultant) says:

> I successfully used DiskSalv to get all files off a floppy with a circular
> directory entry, which is nice because the other versions of DS seemed to
> mess up quite badly with this. However, it took me 6 passes to do it.
> DiskSalv was taking all of the 350K of memory I still had left. 

You didn't mention which version of DiskSalv, which would be helpful.  But
if it has a low memory option, it must be approximately V1.40.  In ordinary
operation, DiskSalv is about 33k long.  If you're restoring floppies, it'll
allocate a raw track buffer, which is about 22k long.  Other system overhead
includes two block bitmaps (440 bytes), and other system structures used by
DS (less than 10K).  So I suspect before you've done anything, you'll be up
to maybe 66K.  If you ask for formatting, the FORMAT command is loaded, which
is another 13K or so, plus any overhead it requires.  And DS will use about 
58 bytes for each directory it finds, 8 bytes for each file.  And of course, 
memory for any devices you have need loaded for the recovery to take place.  
Sounds like you'd need alot of files for that to be a problem...

HOWEVER, there does seem to be some kind of memory bug in DiskSalv V1.40, 
though I haven't been able to track it down yet.  Just this week here at work
we found it giving OUT OF MEMORY errors on a system full of memory.  We did
track calls to AllocMem(), though, and didn't find it actually asking for more
memory than was available, so I figure the bug is actually in the detection of
the zero memory condition, rather than DS actually asking for an outrageous
amount of memory.  But in any case, I'll be checking into it as soon as I can.

> I used the option for using less memory and I restored from one disk to 
> another. Is it supposed to be this memory hungry? For those of us (probably
> rare people) that still have 512K Amigas *shudder*, DS, though a saviour, 
> is a chore to use. Am I doing something wrong or is there an assumption that
> 1M mem is standard now?

If you're directing DS to recover to RAM:, you will use up all your memory
eventually, trying to recover a reasonably full disk.  With two floppies,
DS should work fine on a 512K system.  I always test it at least once or
twice on a small system before I release it.  You don't indicate where your
output's going -- if it is between floppies, it may be the result of a bug
in DS.  If it's to memory, then sure, it's what I expect, you can't hold
880k of data in the 300-whateverK you've got left with a running system and
the program overhead of DiskSalv.  

I suppose now you'll be asking for DS to recover from DF0: to DF0:?  Maybe 
some day, it's been on the enhancement list for quite some time...

> ...Bill
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession

451061%UOTTAWA.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu (Valentin Pepelea) (05/26/89)

Dave Haynie <daveh@cbmvax.uucp> writes in Message-ID: <6980@cbmvax.UUCP>

> HOWEVER, there does seem to be some kind of memory bug in DiskSalv V1.40,
> though I haven't been able to track it down yet.

Clearly 7 Megabytes is a hindrance in the devellopment of software for average
Amigas. I suggest you quickly pull out 2 of those Megabytes and ship them to:

Valentin Pepelea
632 King Edward, Apt. 88
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1N 7P7