pbg@cs.brown.edu (Peter Galvin) (04/15/91)
Egghead software is selling a program called "Stacker" which uses compression to "double" the capacity of hard disks. It is related to the add-in board the same company (Stac) sells which does the same thing. Obviously the software is going to have more of an impact on performance than the hardware would. Has anyone tried Stacker? How much does it slow disk access down? Thanks. -- --Peter ------------------------------------------ -------------------------------- Peter Baer Galvin (401) 863-7623 Systems Manager, Brown Univ. Comp. Sci. pbg@cs.brown.edu Box 1910 (115 Waterman Street) uunet!brunix!pbg Providence, RI 02912 (02906) pbg@browncs.bitnet
iws9012@eva.fmi.uni-passau.de (Thomas Opheys) (04/16/91)
Recently, someone asked about STACKER. I regularly use the software version on an AT which belongs to a friend of mine. If you look at the advertises, Stac Electronics promises the following: - Increase storage 100% My opinion: Although CHKDSK says that a Stacker volume is twice as big as you gave disk space to it, it can happen that there is 'not enough disk space' even though a DIR says that there are some MBytes free. But that's no shame for the product. It does its best on compressing data on the fly and if you create a 16MB volume, you naturally can't store 32MB already compressed ZIP files to it. I don't recommend to use a Stacker volume for compressed files like Archives (ZIP,LZH,ARC,...) or compressed EXEs (done with LZEXE or PKLITE). But Stacker is super on most other files, especially MS Windows and TeX. There are some utilities with Stacker that tell you the compression ratio for every file. In general, you won't increase your storage capacity ba 100%, but a total ratio of 1.6:1 is always possible. - Compatible with DOS 3.x and 4.x My opinion: This is true. My friend even managed to install Stacker on a Siemens PC-D which is only 30-40% IBM hardware compatible. The software works flawless, even with DOS 5.0! - Industry's fastest real-time data compression My opinion: The machine I use Stacker on is a 20 MHz 386 with a hard disk that's not too fast, and we use the software version of Stacker. But astonishingly, the performance of a compressed volume is only slighter less than on a normal one. But don't use the software version on a machine that is much slower. An alternative is the coprocessor card. I haven't seen it but I think performance is extremely good. - Includes disk caching My opinion: True. But not recommended. Stacker without disk caching uses about 30-40k RAM in main memory. Using its own disk caching will take even more memory. My friend goes on using SMARTDRIVE without problems. - Fastest, easiest installation My opinion: It IS fast and easy. I think there is absolutely no danger for your data on the hard disk when installing Stacker. I for myself would even install it without doing a backup before. A Stacker volume is just a big read-only file on your hard disk (unmovable and not fragmented) and can be compared with MS Windows' Swap File. When booting with device=stacker... in your CONFIG.SYS, this file appears to you as just another logical partition! - Toll-free technical support My opinion: never tried it. - 90-day money-back guarantee My opinion: I wouldn't give it away. We never had any problems with Stacker. The only thing I don't recommend is to use software on a Stacker volume that bypasses the DOS and BIOS functions and directly access the hard disk without giving tha Stacker software a chance. Hope this helped... Thomas (iws9012@eva.fmi.uni-passau.de) Also see review in Byte Feb/91 p 132 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like SLEDGE HAMMER (sledge@rtl.tv.koeln.de) - what's wrong with me? -----------------------------------------------------------------------------