Mail Archives: opendos/1997/02/14/03:07:52
OpenDos and Stacker:
1) I understand that OpenDos comes with a version of the Stacker
compression software. Currently I use Stacker version 4.0 +
(with update) on my 60 MB ESDI disk, with PC-DOS 6.1. My question
is if the Stacker software which ships with OpenDos is the same as my
current Stacker v. 4.0? How do they compare? Will OpenDos allow me to
keep and use my current Stacker or does it install its own version by
default, and will this version try to *convert* my existing Stacker
compressed volumes?
2) I have an update for my current Stacker wich allows me to use 32bdfa
(32-disk and file access) under WfW. Does the version shipped with
OpenDos also support this? And will OpenDos in general allow
Windows 32bdfa?
3) How would I go about installing OpenDos on a Stacker compressed
drive, when Stacker pre-loads compression? For instance, if I boot the
computer and intercept compression (CTRL+alt+shift), I guess OpenDos
would not see copies of the ibmdos.com and ibmdos.sys which also
resides on the compressed volume. Thus after installing OpenDos this
way, I guess it would not be able to mount the compressed volume?
If so, does this mean I should install OpenDos with the compressed
volume mounted (with compression pre-loaded)?
4) Maybe drifting off-topic, but with so much knowledge present on this
list, I can resist asking: I have noticed several people, also on
this list, warn against disk compression, preferring file compression -
if any at all. Of course I would have chosen not to use disk
compression, if only my disk was a bit larger than 60 MB.
I guess you can say Stacker keeps up and alive. (With lots of help from
my Iomega Zip drive :-)
The risk you face with disk compression is of course file/data
corruption - since all your data resides in one huge file -
corrupting parts of it may (will?) affect all of it. So far I have
been in luck. I have used Stacker on two computers, with the oldest for
about 3 or 4 years now. The key seems to be regular backups, and
regular disk maintenance. In my case it means CHKDSK /F, which will
also invoke Stacker's CHECK.
Now, after I got my Internet connections and started e-mailing, I
found Stacker reported heavy disk fragmentation more often than before.
Of course, when you receive and delete lots of mail during a week this
is bound to happen. What I did then was to backup and delete lots of
file on my Stacker drive, and then shrink the compressed volume to
gain more un-compressed space. After which I told Stacker to compress
the free space and assign it a new drive letter. It did. I got a new
E: drive in addition to the C: (compressed) and D: (un-compressed) .
I then setup my e-mail client on the new E: drive, and after doing
that, disk maintenance was much easier. Say while I need do disk
maintenance on the E drive two to three times a week, due to
fragmentation, I only need to do this about once a month with the C:
drive, where all my other software is (DOS,WfW,++). Besides this gain
in ease and safety (data corruption on E: does not necessarily affect
C: ), my overall impression is also increased speed. The question is
then: might I gain even more speed if I setup several compressed
volumes on a disk? Do you think there is a brake-even here? Might this
deepen on how different software interact? Say if I set up DOS on one
compressed volume, WfW on another, wouldn't this slow down the system
- at least when running Win, since Win needs to makes several calls to
DOS etc? Thus, would the gain from setting up several compressed
volumes only show where the software on each volume can work more or
less independently - ( taling about degrees here I guess) ?
(Or, does the above only prove that I don't have a clue about this?
:-)
Thanks,
Bjorn
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