CLAYTON@XRT.UPENN.EDU.UUCP (08/22/87)
Information From TSO Financial - The Saga Continues... Chapter 18 - August 22, 1987 Jan Vorbrueggen raised the issue of the directory files not shrinking in size until a directory block was completely empty. The result was large .DIR files with considerable space not being used. Jan asked for a utility to do on-line .DIR compressions. I have to ask why bother compressing the .DIR files if the disk is so active with file creates/deletes. It will only be hiding the acutal fragmentation of the files on the disk. BACKUP is the only way out of this problem, or the third party disk manipulators. We run SPM on the disk to find the number of directories and files and what not and then INITialize the disk accordingly. The BACKUP is done with /NOINIT. We used to do a /HEADERS on the INIT command in the hope of reserving space for file headers and have since found out this is useless. According to an article in DSIN, the BACKUP program has a bug/feature that when a BACKUP/IMAGE is done, the file headers from the input disk is COPIED to the output disk. This is an overwrite and the original headers that you methodically set aside for use are ignored. Sigh... If you do want to use the headers you so methodically set aside, then the BACKUP command has to be of the file copy nature, for example. BACKUP INPUT_DISK:[*...]*.*;* OUTPUT_DISK:[*...]*/OWN=ORIGINAL The usual ending statement in the DSIN article is the words we hold dear, 'This will be fixed in a future...'. So much for trying to do things the best way given current tools to do the job. Paul D. Clayton - Manager Of Systems TSO Financial - Horsham, Pa. USA Address - CLAYTON%XRT@CIS.UPENN.EDU