hek4@crosfield.co.uk (hans kristiansen) (05/22/91)
Hi there! I am looking for an operating system/dos-extension which allows me to read/write very large files at high speed, greater than 700Kb/s. The hardware will easily be capable of such a speed and the software file management will be the limiting factor. The machine will be a genuine 386. Any pointers will be appreciated. Best regards, Hans E. Kristiansen OOPS! Thanks in advance. #include <standard.disclaimer.revised>
il01+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ihor Andrew Lys) (06/04/91)
Sustaining a transfer rate of 700KBytes/sec is not easy. I have done so on a 25MHz 386 w/ an ESDI drive. My performance benchmarks indicate that performance in excess of 850KBytes/sec is possible. The ESDI interface specifies a data transfer rate of 10Mbits/sec, and achieving a rate of 850KB/sec is not bad considering the overhead of DOS. Note that this uses DOS absolute read/write commands, but there is not much overhead in the usual dos file system if your files are large. My 30MB files were certainly very happy on my system. It may be possible to achieve higher transfer rates using SCSI devices, but I suspect that the sustained throughput will not be much different.