========================================================================= (C) 1993 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information. ========================================================================== Category 33, Topic 16 Message 1 Fri May 14, 1993 ORA.TECH at 03:00 EDT DATAlite(tm) 2 Press Release May 12, 1993 Oregon Research Associates is pleased to announce the addition of DATAlite(tm) 2 to our line of high quality software for the Atari ST/STe/TT/Falcon030 line of computers. How would you feel if you woke up one day and found that your 50 megabyte hard disk had suddenly turned into a 100 megabyte hard disk! You'd be stunned, amazed, and pretty HAPPY! Well, that's exactly what will happen to your disk when you install DATAlite(tm). DATAlite(tm) is a sophisticated, powerful program providing real time online data compression for floppy and hard disks. Amazingly fast, you will never know it's installed. DATAlite transparently doubles the storage size of your disks. DATAlite(tm) is completely safe and reliable. It works its' magic as BIOS level device driver completely transparent to the system at the disk level. It does not patch any GEMDOS calls or interfere with the file system in any way. Incompatibilities are impossible. All you know is that your 50 meg hard drive is now a 100 meg hard drive! WOW! Some of DATAlite's features include: * Automatically compresses all files (programs AND data) while storing and decompresses when loaded again * Datalite's efficiency results in a doubling of the usable amount of disk space * Many different compression methods automatically chosen to maximize storage capacity. * Completely transparent, safe, and reliable. You can even use low level disk sector editors to directly edit data contained in "virtual" sectors. * Does not patch any GEMDOS functions or interfere with the file system in any way. * Supports all ST/STe/TT/Falcon030 computers * Supports all TOS versions including MultiTOS * Supports all memory and hardware configurations * Supports ALL disks, including hard disks, removable disks, and floppy disks DATAlite(tm) will be available in late May with a suggested retail price of $79.95. For more information, please contact: Oregon Research Associates 16200 S.W. Pacific Hwy., Suite 162 Tigard, OR 97224 Telephone: (503) 620-4919 1:00-5:00PM PST M-F FAX: (503) 624-2940 ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 2 Sat May 15, 1993 M.POCHE [Mick] at 01:45 EDT Here's a quick DATAlite question that popped into my head as soon as I read the press release. Would/will the data compression/decompression interfere with the Falcons direct-to-disk recording in any way? What I really mean is, would there be a slowdown that could cause the drive to be too slow (on an average speed drive)? If the answer is no, this program sure will save musicians using D2D alot of hard drive space! Personally, I've always been a little leery of real-time compression programs, since I don't like things messin' with my data, but if this program is as safe and reliable as you say it is, then I may actually overcome my paranoia! - Mick ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 3 Sat May 15, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 09:51 EST >> Personally, I've always been a little leery of real-time << >>compression programs, since I don't like things messin' with my << >>data, but if this program is as safe and reliable as you say it << >>is, then I may actually overcome my paranoia! << I still AM paranoid about my data. Maybe, if in a year or so, I haven't heard any horror stories about DataLite the way I have about DD, then I might consider it, but the idea of ALL my disk data being coded in such a way that it depends on the presence of a driver to read it makes me very cautious. I would suggest keeping about a dozen copies (uncompressed) of that driver... Grin. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 4 Sat May 15, 1993 AEO.5 [Ed Krimen] at 15:53 EDT Simply, how does Datalite work? Load an AUTO folder TSR? Does it work like Stacker? ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 5 Sat May 15, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 21:27 EDT Ron, Real-time compression is a fairly mature technology, and it is working fine in the MS-Dull world. Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 6 Sat May 15, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 23:36 EST >> Real-time compression is a fairly mature technology, and it is << >>working fine in the MS-Dull world. << Not what I hear from the MS-DOS 6.0 users so far. Hardly 'mature'. I'll wait. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 7 Sun May 16, 1993 ORA.TECH at 00:42 EDT Mick - DL2 works well with Direct to disk recording systems. It operates transparently as a BIOS device driver below the file system. Ed - It operates very much like Stacker or Disk Doubler in the PC/Mac world in that it's operation is transparent to the system. After installation everything in the system simply sees a disk that's twice as big as it physically is. You can even take your favorite low level disk sector editing tool ad edit the real data in the "virtual sectors" Ron - I agree with aspects of you apprehension. There is always a certain risk when you are dependent on any driver program to access your data, but then your always dependent on you hard disk driver aren't you?? DATAlite operates at the physical device driver level, it simply compresses the data before passing it on to the hard disk driver. My advice is and has always been if you need more disk space buy a bigger hard disk. However an additional $300-800 for a bigger hard disk simply isn't a viable alternative for many people. I also would never recommend using any real time compression program on any partition where data is stored that the world would come to a complete end if your drive crashed. e.g. I would never ever install DL2 on my source code partition because even if the drive went physically bad and I was stupid enough not to have a valid backup I could pay a data recovery service to tear apart the drive and recover the data for me. However, for those who cannot afford or do not want to pay for a bigger hard drive, or simply want more space on their auxillary storage partitions, DATAlite is a viable, safe, and inexpensive alternative. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 8 Sun May 16, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 10:10 EST >>risk when you are dependent on any driver program to access your << >>data, but then your always dependent on you hard disk driver << >>aren't you?? DATAlite << Yes, but then I can use any of several, in a pinch. Being dependant on only ONE, even if I had multiple floppy copies (is that legal?) would make me fairly nervous. But then I am not really desperate for space now, either... Grin. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 9 Fri May 14, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] (Forwarded) Bob, is this a new product created by you or are you the distributor? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Friday 14 May 1993 at 08:36 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 10 Sat May 15, 1993 CBARRON (Forwarded) "Incompatibilities are impossible." NEVER say IMPOSSIBLE. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 11 Sun May 16, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] (Forwarded) How does Datalite compare to Data Diet? I bought Data Diet but removed it from my system because: 1) It was too easy to screw up my hard drive. Not because the program was buggy (it wasn't) but because it made some simple human errors very dangerous. I made just about every human error imaginable, from "dietizing" my hard drive's .SYS driver to filling up my new-found hard drive space until there was no room for files to "decompress" into, and I paid dearly for my mistakes. I hope Datalite is more foolproof for fools like me. 2) It was too slow. I use Aladdin more than any other program and the time it took for Aladdin to close down all its open files upon exiting the program was just way too long. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 12 Sun May 16, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 22:55 EDT BOb, is this the German product that has been out for a while? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Sunday 16 May 1993 at 11:15 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 13 Mon May 17, 1993 OUTRIDER [Terry] at 06:06 EDT Ron, The change of seasons makes you nervous. ;^) __ /erry .\\ay ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 14 Mon May 17, 1993 D.STMARTIN [Binary Ink] at 07:23 EDT Bob: One question regarding DATALite. How much RAM does this sucker gobble? -- Dave @ Binary Ink ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 15 Mon May 17, 1993 T.MAGEE1 [Todd] at 08:34 EDT When you edit a sector on the HD with DL2 installed, you get the compressed sector or the uncompressed sector? I think you mean the uncompressed one, which blows my mind at the level DL2 is actually working at then. Also, if we wanted to, and with how DL2 works, how would we remove DL2? Sounds like that could get complicated. Todd ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 16 Tue May 18, 1993 ORA.TECH at 02:34 EDT Brain - DATAlite 2 is a German product that has been available for many years. David - The system never sees anything but real files. Like Stacker etc. on the PC it compresses disk blocks, not files. It operates below the system as a physicla device driver. The system never sees anything but real files. The speed with optimization set for optimum decompress is very very fast. Dave - DATAlite takes 45K plus whatever cache memory you choose to give it. Todd - When you use a sector editor or other low level tool you get the same thing that every other application gets. Real data. There is no concept of a "dietized file" or a "squished" application. The only thing the system sees are real data and programs. To remove DATAlite 2 from a partition you select "Decompress" from the configuration menu. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 17 Tue May 18, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 04:25 EST >> The change of seasons makes you nervous. ;^) << >> << Yes, it does. Especially when summer comes, I sweat a lot down here in Texas. Grin. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 18 Tue May 18, 1993 AEO.5 [Ed Krimen] at 14:17 EDT >Ed - It operates very much like Stacker or Disk Doubler in the PC/Mac world in >that it's operation is transparent to the system. After installation >everything in the system simply sees a disk that's twice as big as it >physically is. You can even take your favorite low level disk sector editing >tool ad edit the real data in the "virtual sectors" Thanks for the explanation, Bob. Don't Stacker and Disk Doubler possess two different philosophies on disk compression, though? Stacker works on a whole-disk basis, while Disk Doubler works on a file-by-file basis, which is vaguely similar to DataDiet? It would appear that TimesTwo on the Mac would be more like Stacker and DataLite 2. Is that correct? > 1) It was too easy to screw up my hard drive. Not because the program was > buggy (it wasn't) but because it made some simple human errors very > dangerous. I made just about every human error imaginable, from > "dietizing" my hard drive's .SYS driver to filling up my new-found hard > drive space until there was no room for files to "decompress" into, and I > paid dearly for my mistakes. I hope Datalite is more foolproof for fools > like me. David, your .SYS driver is an executable. If you want to compress it, you should use Squish, not DataDiet. Personally, I think compressing any of your system's vital data and program files is dangerous. > 2) It was too slow. I use Aladdin more than any other program and > the time it took for Aladdin to close down all its open files upon > exiting the program was just way too long. Aladdin in itself is quite slow, simply because of all the files it opens and closes at once. Reminds me of the Mac: "Oh, you want to press the mouse button, well let me check with the System file...." ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 19 Tue May 18, 1993 NEVIN-S at 19:27 EDT Sounds like just what I need for my TT. Good luck with this new product! --Nevin ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 20 Tue May 18, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 19:30 EDT Bob, If I have DATAlite 2 setup for say, partition D and all my stuff is being compressed/decompressed, etc. and I then turn off DATAlite, are you saying there will be no harm and my data will be the same as it was? What does selecting Decompress from the Comfiguration menu do other than the obvious. Will it goes through and do a lot of work to restore the partition back? If I have a partition setup and would normally have 32 meg but using DATAlite, I get (for instance) 60 meg and I use 45 meg and then turn off DATAlite, what will happen? I guess the questions are due to not understanding exactly how DATAlite 2 works. I know how DataDiet works and that's why i have stayed away from it. I am very cautious when it comes to my data. I spend a lot of time putting it there and getting it the way I want it. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 21 Wed May 19, 1993 T.MAGEE1 [Todd] at 00:45 EDT Some part of C (or A, whatever you are booting from) has to have a partial area NOT compressed at ANY time so it can read the datalite2 driver, which if compressed wouldn't be readable because the dirver wouldn't be there to uncompress it, right? If it is a German product that has been available for many years, then there must be some review of DL2 out there? How about seeing one? Todd ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 22 Wed May 19, 1993 EXPLORER.5 [Robert Goff] at 02:44 EDT Bob, I'm still not clear on what level DL2 compression works. Since I'm familiar with Stacker and SuperStor on MS-DOS, a fast answer would be to say which of those it works like. (One is a physical device driver and the other is a BIOS patch, both of which I've heard used to describe DL2.) From another angle, does DL2 create a new 'virtual' compressed drive letter in the system? |) | |)O|) Robert Goff ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 23 Wed May 19, 1993 B.STOREY [Billy B.] at 21:39 EDT DATAlite sounds good, and I haven't heard any warnings about possible dangers, but I would feel more comfortable knowing that "If you compress your datafile, you can't uncompress it, so BE CAREFUL!", or "NEVER fill your HD beyond the 3/4 mark, or you won't have room to uncompress your files!",....that sort of thing. As another person said, I found all the bad things about DD from sad experience. They didn't tell you the dangers, either. I no longer use it, because I have (temporarily at least) plenty of HD space. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 24 Thu May 20, 1993 ORA.TECH at 00:07 EDT Wayne, No DL2 is a disk based compression. You can't turn it off. There is no such thing as the concept of a compressed file. It compresses disk blocks, not files. It works at the same level as the hard disk driver. The system never sees anything but real data. If you want to "deinstall it" from a drive you need to back the data up(the system sees only real files remember) and then select decompress from the configuration menu. The restore you files to the empty regular partition. Best regards, Bob ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 25 Thu May 20, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 04:16 EDT Bob, Sounds good. I like that concept a lot beteer. Look for my order soon. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 26 Thu May 20, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 18:31 EDT Bob, How slow is DL2? Will it be inappropriate for using with Aladdin? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Thursday 20 May 1993 at 07:03 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 27 Thu May 20, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 23:34 EST >>no such thing as the concept of a compressed file. It compresses << >>disk blocks, not files. It works at the same level as the hard << >>disk driver. The system never sees anything but real data. If you << >>want to "deinstall it" from a drive << Bob, Huh? How does the driver load? Don't you need SOME part of a disk, at minimum, that is not compressed? ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 28 Fri May 21, 1993 ORA.TECH at 00:24 EDT Bob - It works as an Rwabs patch doing the block management and tehn passing on the actual block write to teh hard disk driver of your choice. Billy - The only negative thing about disk level compression is that traditional Data recovery tools like Diamond Edge will generally be unable to recover the contents deleted files or lost clusters. Because it compresses disk blocks and creates a "virtual disk" that is larger than th physical disk, when you delete a file the FAT entries get cleared and the data in the virtual sector exits the block management system. DE and other file undelete utilities will say that they are recoverable, but the resulting recovered file will often contain "zeros" because it resided in the "virtual" part of the disk. This increases the importance of up to date hard disk backups if you are prone to accidently putting things in the trash you didn;t mean to. Another thing to understand is that "optimization" using traditional hard disk optimizers like DE and Sentry etc. will defragment the FAT and will do no harm, but can actually slow down DATAlites performance by complicating the internal block management structures. It is better to use DATAlites own optimization function periodically to optimize a DATAlite drive. The "disk full" management of DATAlite is excellent, and it is something you never have to worry about. We tried every trick in the book to try to screw it up in the acceptance testing and it's just rock solid. It dynamically resizes the "virtual disk" to accomodate new data and because it's disk level compression rather than file level, it does not need a "temporary working" directory to store intermediate decompressed files. Best regards, Bob ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 29 Sat May 22, 1993 ORA.TECH at 00:10 EDT Ron - If you install DL2 on a boot partition, it does set it up so you can boot :-) Obviously that means some part is stored uncompressed. Bob ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 30 Sat May 22, 1993 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 07:06 EDT Bob, The discussion here is making me curious, and I'm not sure I've really grasped the compression-by-block concept yet. A couple questions: Would there be any way to do compressed backups, other than having Diamond Back (for instance) apply its own compression to the files after they are read (uncompressed) by DataLite? Would DL be able to get around the one-file-per-cluster limitation as it creates its blocks on the disk? I can see where that would save a lot of space in some circumstances. gnox ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 31 Sat May 22, 1993 B.STOREY [Billy B.] at 07:08 EDT Bob, Re trying to "screw it up". I'll bet if there is a way to screw it up, I'll find it! I have tested several Hard Drive defraggers and DD. I managed to destroy my HD with every one of them. I tend to do things which on later investigation in the manual, or calls to the developer, you shouldn't do. That's why I desire out front the warnings, not buried in the back of the book where I haven't gotten to, yet. I have grown the same attitude toward HD tools as I have toward politicians. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 32 Sat May 22, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 10:07 EST >> << >>Ron - If you install DL2 on a boot partition, it does set it up so << >>you can boot :-) Obviously that means some part is stored << >>uncompressed. << Good, thought maybe it loaded by voodoo, or something. grin. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 33 Sat May 22, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 13:22 EDT Will/can DE every be made to support DL2? It seems like I must choose between them! I don't want to! Can DL2 be set up for only one partition. I know this is an obvious question, but just making sure. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Saturday 22 May 1993 at 02:15 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 34 Sat May 22, 1993 F.LAWRENCE2 [FRANK] at 21:04 EDT Bob, On a system using the standard 512 sectors on the internal HD and a Syquest partitioned with DE with 1 BGM 1024 sectors, will DL handle this or will there be a problem? Frank ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 35 Mon May 24, 1993 ORA.TECH at 14:10 EDT gnox - You're right, since the system never sees anything but real files, you would apply DB2's compression on backups to get compressed backups. However, there is no performance penalty since DL2's decompression speed is phenomenal and reading a reduced number of physical sectors(due to compression) and decompressing gets DB2 to data faster than reading the original number of uncompressed sectors from disk because of the reduction in disk io. You're right, since DL2 compresses disk blocks and not files, it is not restricted to wasting 1024 bytes for a 2 byte file. Brian - Yea DL2 can be set to only a single partiton(or any partition(s) of your choice), It is also fully compatible with Diamond Back and Diamond Edge and all other disk utilities(cleanup, sentry, knife, edhak etc...) You do loose some of the funtionality of traditional defragmentors as you can actually slow the system down defragmenting. This is because although you do defragment the FAT you may actually complicate the internal block management. It is recommended that you use the special optimizer that comes with DL2 on DL2 partitions. Frank - DL2 handles all disk formats, having 512 byte sectors on one partition and 1024 byte sectors on another is no problem. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 36 Mon May 24, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 15:52 EDT Bob, So you are saying only the optimizing part of DE shouldn't be used? The mirroring, undelete and disk checking will work from DE? How does the optimising of DL2 compare to DE? Bottom line, has anyone found a problem CAUSED by this program? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Monday 24 May 1993 at 04:44 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 37 Tue May 25, 1993 ORA.TECH at 00:01 EDT Brain - That's not exactly what I said. It does absolutely no harm to use Diamond Edge or Sentry or any other optimizer on a DATAlite partition. However, the performance may actually decrease because although you have defragmented the GEMDOS logical structure, you may have "fragmented" DATAlite's block structure. It is better from a preformance perspective to optimize a DATAlite partition with DATAlites optimizer. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 38 Tue May 25, 1993 D.FLORY [ALERTsys*Cop] at 10:38 EST This optimizing talk sounds the same as eDisk on the Mac. Very similar products I think, eDisk works fine, no reason DL2 shouldn't. (-: Happy Bytes :-) Dave Flory, ALERTsys*Cop 07:21 PST - 05/25/93 ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 39 Tue May 25, 1993 S.SAMUELS [ORCA] at 23:20 EDT This is getting interesting.... I could use more space, like most folks. A dumb question occured to me last night, ...here goes: I some large drives with fairly large partitions. Let's take one example. A partition of 155 megs. Now with DL2 made active on that partition will there be -any- problem with GEM 'seeing' is as a larger than the maximum allowed 256 megs??? Also, ...I want to double check several things with you. You say that ICD CleanUp program will work fine with DL2 partitions, right? Ok.. how about the ICD fast tape bak up program and tape drive? Can I use this to make tape bak-up of DL2 partitions? Can I do so as 'file' bak-ups or only as 'image' bak-up, ...if at all. Bak'ing up to floppies is not a real world consideration for me because of the amount of HD space I use. thanks in advance for the answers... ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 40 Tue May 25, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 23:47 EDT If it comes from Oregon Research, I feel comfortable that the program is solid. But there is one assurance I would like to have. DataDiet claimed up to 60% reduction, mentioning especially, if I recall correctly, word processing files. The most I ever got on any file, including WordPerfect, was 17%. This low rate was not enough to compensate for other problems it created and I dropped it. So that claim for DATAlite2 of doubling disk space is dependable? And how are the results for files that have their own compression methods, such as SPECTRUM .spc? Best to leave as .spu and let DATAlite2 work its magic, or will it perform further compression on .spc? Thanks for any information. Stan ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 41 Wed May 26, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 20:07 EDT ORCA, GEM can work with partitions of 512 megs, by the way... Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 42 Thu May 27, 1993 ORA.TECH at 01:20 EDT ORCA - DL2 obeys the GEM maxiumum of 32767 clusters per partition for any given logical sectro size. The system only see's real files so your ICD tape backup can be file based. Stan - The level of compression is dependent on the kind of files you have. There are 4 different compression algorithms desgined to compress different types of files better. Using DL optimization will squeeze the most space out of your disk. A typical DL disk will yeild a capacity of %170 - %180 of normal size with an average mix of applications and data. I have partitions that have yeilded over %250 of normal capacity. I have never seen one below %145 Best regards, Bob ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 43 Thu May 27, 1993 J.BUDIL [Jonathan] at 01:37 EST I know a bit about how a similar product for the Mac called TimesTwo works, and I want to know if DL2 works the same way: With TimesTwo, the average file compresses by 50%. But of course some blocks won't compress nearly that much, perhaps because they are filled with already compressed data. To compensate for this discrepancy, TimesTwo creates an invisible file that accounts for the missing storage space. Here's an example for how this works: You have a 100 meg hard drive. TimesTwo tells you it is 200 megs. You have a 100 meg digitized video sample. TimesTwo's driver-level compressors can only reduce the blocks it is stored on to 75 megs. In your disk directory, the file still shows up as 100 megs, and your disk drive is still showing a maximum capacity of 200 megs -- yet since only 25 megs worth of real drive space is left (which times two is 50 megs), then the driver has to pretend that an invisible file is eating up 50 megs, so that at the file level it will make sense to the system that only 50 megs of space remain on a 200 meg hard drive with just 100 megs used. Everyone with me so far? Now here's a possible trouble scenario: let's pretend that this virtual 200 meg drive is already half full, and that everything got 50% compression. The disk information says that there are 200 megs total, 100 megs are used, and 100 megs of virtual space (or 50 megs of real space) remain. You decide (in a fit of insanity) to download the mother of all files from GEnie (100 megs, compressed) But wait! The TimesTwo compressor has already demonstrated that it can't get 50% compression from already compressed file blocks. You'll get a disk full error and possibly lose the download or worse! Now, all exaggerations aside, is it possible to run out of room unexpectedly with DATAlite? Does DATAlite create an invisible file to account for compression inefficiencies? If you try to put 5 megs of compressed files onto a DATAlite disk with allegedly 5 virtual megs free, will it be able to accomodate you? --Jonathan in Normal ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 44 Thu May 27, 1993 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 07:35 EDT Bob, Since DL doesn't work at the file level it wouldn't make sense for it to report a compression percentage for a filetype or a directory, right? Which is why the figures you gave are for partitions? Stan, Because of the above it would be a little difficult to compare DL and DD in terms of file compression (as opposed to partition compression). It will be interesting to see what happens if someone gets hold of both and tries identical partitions with them. Something must have been wrong with your DD setup though; with mine I get _averages_ of 36% compression with WordPerfect files and 67% with PageStream docs. gnox ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 45 Thu May 27, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 23:19 EST >>identical partitions with them. Something must have been wrong << >>with your DD setup though; with mine I get _averages_ of 36% << >>compression with WordPerfect files and 67% with PageStream docs. << Gnox, I have some PageStream files that compress about 90% (1/10th previous size) with STZIP. Large .IMG pics on a doc will really make it large, but the compression is great. I would gain a lot of space on my PageStream partition with such a program, but it wouldn't help some of the others much. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 46 Fri May 28, 1993 ORA.TECH at 01:46 EDT Jon - When you run out of disk space you will receive a disk full message from GEMDOS just like any other disk. You can configure how big DL tells GEMDOS the disk is thorugh the configuration ACC, You can be conservative and have it tell the system that it is the sum of all the compressed space plus the uncompressed free sectors. This guartenees anything you put on it WILL fit. In this case if you go over that amount, you do not get a disk full error, but DL dynamically resizes the disk to accomodate the new data. gnox - That is right, there is no concept of a compressed file in DL, all compression figures are for the entire disk. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 47 Fri May 28, 1993 HISOFT at 13:25 EDT >The system only see's real files so your ICD tape backup can >be file based. Not wishing to argue with you Bob (:-), but I think the ICD tape program talks directly to the ICD driver (rather than going through Rwabs()) so I'd be surpised if an ICD file backup worked. This is only a transient problem though whilst we await Diamond Back 3's release of course! Alex Kiernan, HiSoft. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 48 Sat May 29, 1993 S.SAMUELS [ORCA] at 03:33 EDT Bob and HISOFT... ok guys... now ya got me good and confused on the the question of 'will the ICD Tape back up work in file back up mode' on DL2 partitions! One person says, "yes", another says, "I don't think so,.. maybe not.., etc." ..and HISOFT, really the reason I'm asking about it doesn't get satisfied by an improved Diamond Back 3 or any other bak up requiring floppies as a medium. I'm not knocking DB at all (or any other back up utility) ... but, for me, backing up over a gig of HD space onto floppies just don't cut it,...if ya see what I mean? %^) If I can't use DL2 -and- the ICD Tape with certainty and security then I'll just have to consider bigger HD's. Thanks to you both, and I'd appreciate anymore info on this issue. Best,...Orca ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 49 Sat May 29, 1993 ORA.TECH at 03:54 EDT I wouldn't want to argue with you Alex :-)) You know ICD's tape driver better than I do, especially after they would not loan me a tape drive for testing DB3's tape driver. However, if ICD's tape software is capable of File based backups, then unless it completely duplicates GEMDOS directory and FAT search code and logical to physical conversion to find the physical location of the files on the disk and bypass GEMDOS altogether with physical io to read the file, it would have to go through GEMDOS to read the files. In that case it would get real files from GEMDOS through DL. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 50 Sat May 29, 1993 ORA.TECH at 03:57 EDT Orca - Diamond Back 3 Supports all SCSI tape drives. Best regards, Bob@ORA*l ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 51 Sat May 29, 1993 J.BUDIL [Jonathan] at 10:43 EST > You can be conservative and have it tell the system that it is the sum of > all the compressed space plus the uncompressed free sectors. This > guartenees anything you put on it WILL fit. Neat feature, Bob! Sounds like you've got a winner there. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 52 Sun May 30, 1993 AEO.5 [Ed Krimen] at 01:02 EDT > You have a 100 meg digitized video sample. TimesTwo's driver-level >compressors can only reduce the blocks it is stored on to 75 megs. Ouch! A compressed digitized video sample. Talk about slooooow- motion! This theoretical person doesn't need TimesTwo, but a much, much larger hard drive. :-) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 53 Sun May 30, 1993 B.AEIN [B Man] at 01:23 EDT I have an ICD tape backup, and will be a beta tester for DB3 if you so wish. I really do not like the ICD backup software!!!!!!!!! I have Dedge and have found it indespensiable for bigger than Gem partitions, Although I think the newest version of Turbo HD toolkit is much faster at bubbling free space on 32meg or less drives, I have not done actual timed tests, But I think THDToolkit moves each section from one part of the drive to the other end, where as, DE inchworms the information into possition. Just watch the graphic display. Can DE be sped up in this regard? Thanks Bman ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 54 Sun May 30, 1993 S.DEITZ [Steve] at 05:27 EDT Will there be offers of a "competetive upgrade" for DataLite from other real time data compressors? ----STEVE---- ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 55 Sun May 30, 1993 ORA.TECH at 20:03 EDT Off topic Brian - The compress free space option is provided for those that are comfortable with that method of optimization and there are very few situations that we recommend that over Full Optimization. Even though the display says "bubbling free space", Toolkit does not have a true "compress free space", it always does an optimization. Try timing DE Full optimization against Toolkit and you'll find DE blows it out of the water. Independent time trials appear in a comparative review of DE vs. Toolkit in the Nov/Dec 1992 issue of Atari Exlporer. Best regards, Bob@ORA Remember the only way to do time comparisions is to restore a precise image backup and operate on the same partition under precisedly the same machine configuration(including resident programs) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 56 Mon May 31, 1993 B.AEIN [B Man] at 00:33 EDT Bob, I was refering to HDTK optimize for either read or write disks. When it starts bubbling the disk it is non stop action on the HD. DE like I said, has a slinky kind of movment of data, which is where I think it could be speed up. I think I will run a head to head test, like I said, I have ICD tape back up and can restore a partition exactly. I guess I should time DE after it runs all its diagnostics Hun? I'll time both from running from desktop as well, its only fair if DE is really as fast as that artical says. P.s. the first name is Ben not Brian Thanks Bman ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 57 Mon May 31, 1993 B.AEIN [B Man] at 02:44 EDT I ran some tests on both 30meg partition 31% free file space frag 1.66% Free space Frag 27.01% Hdtk total time 11:54 Diamond Edge 7:16 This is on a very fragmented partition, I guess Hdtk is only faster on slightly fraged partitions because it does not create the frag map and run the disk diagnois?!? Can the alert dialogs be turned off so you do not need to hover over the computer while it optimizes? I got a Fatal Dos error #-1 allocating memory location 671 What is this and how do I get rid of it? Is there any way to reformat 1 large partiton into 2 in an easy way? I have a 92meg partition that I wish to split with out reformating the whole bloody drive is this possible with DE or ICD utilites? Thanks and sorry about the misinterperted speed difference, I guess De optimizes and move the data in one step where HDTK does one then the other. Bman ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 59 Mon May 31, 1993 T.MAGEE1 [Todd] at 11:41 EDT Bob, I must admit that DE is very fast at full optimization. I was curious if there is anything that can be put on a system to make DE run just a bit faster? I am not complaining about the speed, but ever since I messed with my setup and got everything working great, DE really seems to be a bit faster. Can this be possible, or is it just in my head. Or maybe it is that I am relaxed now since I don't have to worry about everything bombing and correcting the situation!? :) Todd ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 61 Mon May 31, 1993 OUTRIDER [Terry] at 21:24 EDT Todd, Try freeing up as much memory as possible. I believe DE uses as much memory as is available, and the more available, the faster it runs (since the 'blocks' are larger). __ /erry .\\ay ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 62 Mon May 31, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 22:58 EDT gnox: Thanks for your message. I don't understand how something could have "been wrong with (my) DD setup". It's been a while, but as I remember, one choose compression method A or B and the program did the rest. I choose both at different times and still got 17% compression tops. I posted an inquiry in the DD topic, but never got a response. This was not the first time correspondance went ignored with that company. >Since DL doesn't work at the file level it wouldn't make sense for it to report a compression percentage for a filetype or a directory... Because of the above it would be a little difficult to compare DL and DD in terms of file compression (as opposed to partition compression).< I am bound to admit I often don't make very good sense, and this is why I wouldn't ask for a comparision of file compression versus partition compression. These are matters of sublety beyond me. No, my inquiry was on a more mundane level: truth in advertising. DD was preceded by claims that, in my experience, were greatly inflated. Consequently, I wasted a considerable sum of money that would have been better used otherwise and I ignored any further offerings from that company. So, when the release for DL claims to double your disk space, I was seeking reassurance that I would not again be throwing money away. And I did express my confidence in Oregon Research. my best Stan ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 63 Mon May 31, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 23:48 EDT You wouldn't really compare the compression on filesize. Compare the amount of free space you get. If after compressing all your files with DD and you end up with 15 - 25% more HD space but, with DL you end up with 75-100% more HD space, then you have your comparison. With DL, you don't need 2 seperate programs to do compression either. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 64 Mon May 31, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 23:58 EDT Brian, Can'tcha just move the bloody messages and be done with it? You're being very creative and clever in your topic reminders, but the frequency of them is driving me bonkers! Bob, I think your mailing said that DATAlite won't be available here until September, is that correct? I don't have my brochure here right handy. ===Tomas=== May 31, 1993 @ 8:51:41 pm PDT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 65 Tue Jun 01, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 06:37 EDT Tomas, My mailing said late May for availability. Since it is June now.... ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 66 Tue Jun 01, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 19:05 EDT Tomas, Sorry, but I get damned either way (moving or not moving). However, I will move DE from now on. Some people just doesn't get the hint unless you hit them over the head with a sack of granola [grin]. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Tuesday 01 June 1993 at 07:54 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 67 Tue Jun 01, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 22:21 EDT Wayne, Oh good. Thanks! ===Tomas=== June 01, 1993 @ 6:56:42 am PDT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 68 Tue Jun 01, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 22:28 EDT Is it shipping to dealers? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Tuesday 01 June 1993 at 11:24 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 69 Tue Jun 01, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 23:16 EDT Brian, I wouldn't damn you, just darn you. It isn't whether or not you move a message that bothers me. It just that I remember a time when the sysops were a little less conspicuous. You could pace yourself and limit your hints to once every 24 hours or just jump in and say "The blah-blah messages will be moving to CAT X TOP Y." I know, I know, this message is off topic. :-) ===Tomas=== June 01, 1993 @ 7:47:21 pm PDT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 70 Wed Jun 02, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 00:04 EDT Brian, I think you need to delete and repost your own message. It contains a word that should not be used. I thought you knew this since the word crap is even not allowed. Delete this one also. :-) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 71 Wed Jun 02, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 18:29 EDT Wayne, Actually both are allowed. If any inquiries please EMail me. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Wednesday 02 June 1993 at 07:17 p.m. ADT I am off topic again. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 73 Thu Jun 03, 1993 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 06:49 EDT Stan, Yes, it's true that while Double Click was handling Data Diet, customer support was poor, especially during the final year of Double Click's existence. However that's all changed now, as anyone can testify who's asked for support in the current Data Diet topic (Cat 2 Top 12). DD is now supported by its author, Keith Gerdes, through his own company, Trace Technologies. As for this topic, it's for discussion of DataLite, so we'd better get back to that before Brian gets after us. :) I just didn't want people to be misled by your post into thinking that the figures you gave were normal performance. gnox ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 75 Thu Jun 03, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 23:19 EDT Messsages 72 and 74 are now in the DE topic. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Friday 04 June 1993 at 00:16 a.m. ADT "The blah-blah messages will be moving to CAT X TOP Y." [grin] ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 76 Fri Jun 04, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 10:24 EDT Brian, ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 77 Fri Jun 04, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 23:10 EDT I would like to make a clarification of my last remarks. Any comments concerning dissatisfaction with user support for DataDiet had nothing to do with its present company, TraceTech or its present Topic on the Roundtable, but with the program's former company. My impression of TraceTech is very positive. Looking forward to further word on the release of Data Lite Stan ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 78 Sun Jun 06, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 19:56 EDT Does it work under MultiTOS? Is it available yet? When will it be at the dealers? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Sunday 06 June 1993 at 08:31 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 79 Thu Jun 17, 1993 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 18:04 EDT Hi Bob, it was nice to meet you at CAF. I'm sitting here with my disk full and all I'm thinking is; too bad I couldn't pick up DATAlite at the show. When will we be able to order and for how long are the price shows going to be in effect? ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 80 Thu Jun 17, 1993 ORA.TECH at 20:45 EDT Yes, we were disappointed that we weren't ready with DL2 at the CT fest. We very much hope to have the manuals and boxes for the KC Atari Fest next week. It's in the hands of the printer. The show prices listed on the flyer are good until the end of July. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 81 Fri Jun 18, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 17:36 EDT >Does it work under MultiTOS? ~~~~Brian ... Written on Friday 18 June 1993 at 06:25 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 82 Mon Jun 21, 1993 ORA.TECH at 21:31 EDT Brian - Yes it works under MultiTOS. We should be shipping at the Kansas City show this weekend. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 83 Mon Jun 21, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 21:41 EDT Great! So TOAD should have it Real soon now [grin]. Thanks. I am anxiously waiting it! ~~~~Brian ... Written on Monday 21 June 1993 at 10:40 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 84 Wed Jun 30, 1993 J.KRZYSZTOW [JEFFREY] at 00:35 EDT Bob, Hope your trip back to Oregon went ok! I am glad you made the trip! Now for the reason I'm writing. There seems to be a conflict between DataLite2 and MultiDesk Deluxe 3.4a. If I boot the system without anything but ICDBoot 6.0.8 installed as a .SYS file, DataLite.PRG in the AUTO folder, and MultiDesk Deluxe as the only desk accessory. When I first try to run DataLite 2 after the system boots, I get a dialog that states: WARNING!! DATALite2 XBRA-vectors are lost. Cont Remove Boot I hope between you and CodeHead, this problem can be solved. Thanks, Jeffrey ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 85 Wed Jun 30, 1993 J.WILSON103 [John] at 21:09 EDT > > WARNING!! DATALite2 > XBRA-vectors are lost. > Cont Remove Boot > Jeffrey, Mind telling me what type puter u have? I am / was having the same problem. John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 86 Thu Jul 01, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 02:19 EDT For what it's worth, I get that error with only HotWire and Datalite 2 and ICD software installed. Mega 4, TOS 2.06. I compressed a partition anyway. Wow! It works! ===Tomas=== June 30, 1993 @ 11:12:43 pm PDT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 87 Thu Jul 01, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 09:42 EDT Jeffrey, We are looking into the "conflict" between MultiDesk Deluxe and DataLITE 2. As far as I know, there is no problem -- only a rather stern warning that MultiDesk has broken the XBRA chain that needlessly frightens users of DataLITE 2. We'll keep users of both programs informed of any progress that we find. John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 88 Thu Jul 01, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 21:07 EDT As John said Oregon Research and CodeHead are working together to investigate the "conflict". Also as John says, the message that DATAlite's XBRA chain has been broken is inappropriately harsh as it does does not effect the operation of either DATAlite or MultiDesk. I have been using both thoughout the entire product acceptance phase as well as most of the rest of CodeHeads high quality line of products. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 89 Thu Jul 01, 1993 J.WILSON103 [John] at 21:18 EDT > >I compressed a partition anyway. Wow! It works! > > ===Tomas=== Brave fellow aren't you Tomas? I got scared off so much I got the shakes and hosed my HD...had to reformat and begin anew...so far, I have not gotten the courage back up (g). Diamond Back II saved me though! J_Dub ~~~~~ Thursday, July 1, 1993 8:04:06 pm ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 90 Thu Jul 01, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 23:23 EST >>As far as I know, there is no problem -- only a rather stern << >>warning that MultiDesk has broken the XBRA chain that needlessly << >>frightens users of DataLITE 2. We'll keep users of both programs << >>informed of any progress that << John, Does MultiDesk truly break the XBRA chain, or does it just 'break into' it? Seems breaking it would cause problems... ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 91 Thu Jul 01, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 23:25 EDT J_Dub, Brave is one thing you could call it. I'm a born beta-breaker. I also like to keep fresh backups on hand! ===Tomas=== July 01, 1993 @ 8:18:51 pm PDT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 92 Fri Jul 02, 1993 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 02:29 EDT What is this? Already some Datalite 2 users and I have not seen an official release announced. Last I heard there were no manuals. Please let me know if we can purchase as my Megafile thirty could use a little help! :-) John B. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 93 Fri Jul 02, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 04:13 EDT I installed DataLITE today and tried all kinds of tests and tricks and could not find a problem caused by the "breaking of the XBRA chain". I also checked and noticed that MultiDesk does not use XBRA protocol at all. Many of our other programs use it, but for some reason we never used it in MultiDesk. Without cluttering up this topic, I'd like to make a few points about XBRA before a big discussion ensues: 1. XBRA is not a documented system protocol. It started in Germany years ago and the German programmers like to think that any program that doesn't use it is in error. This is not so. There has never been any mention of it in Atari documentation. 2. We began including XBRA in many of our programs a few years ago and for some reason MultiDesk was not included. 3. We have never used XBRA for our own communications (to search for one of our programs) because it is too easily broken. It only takes one program that doesn't use it to make it fail. The use of XBRA to find a program for communication is not a reliable technique. I hope ORA can convince the programmers of DataLITE 2 to use a more fail-safe means of finding their resident routines. This doesn't mean we're not willing to add XBRA to MultiDesk. It's just that there are thousands of MultiDesks out there now. Even if XBRA were added to all of them, it wouldn't guarantee the same message won't appear with other programs which don't use XBRA. None of this detracts in the least from my high regard for the quality of DataLITE 2. I think it's an excellent piece of programming. It just needs a couple of those sharp German barbs filed down a bit. John P.S. These same statements about XBRA have been in our Eleven Commandments for several years now. I still wish we could have translated them into German long ago. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 94 Fri Jul 02, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 09:13 EDT BTW, I have always thought it was appropriate that this chain was named after one of the neatest guys in the Atari programming field, Moshe Branner (Braner? I'm not sure....) In any case, the message anout MDD breaking the chain seems too harsh. Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 95 Sat Jul 03, 1993 J.KRZYSZTOW [JEFFREY] at 11:45 EDT Bob, Hi, still having some problems with DATAlite2. I have a hard drive that has two partitions on it. The first partition is C:, my boot drive. The second partition is drive D:. This partition I turned into a DATALite 2 drive and am having problems with it. I also have partitions E: - H: setup as DATALite drives. Partitions E and F: are separate drives. Partitions G: and H: are two partitions from the same drive. All work fine except D:. I get disk full errors when NeoDesk tells me there is 9,371,648 meg of free space left. MaxiFile tells me that the partition is 2,567,168 bytes and all are used. The drive before DATALite2 is 30 meg. NeoDesk tells me drive D: is 30,837,760 with 9,371,648. Does DATALite2 "deal" with partitions with different sector sizes? Drive C: and D: and 512 byte sectors. Drives E: - H: are 1,024 byte sectors. I'm not having problems with any other drive other than D:. -->> DATAlite - Parameters TOS Values BOOT - abs. minimum BPB - act. minimum DFREE - average These are checked - "Only legal sectors" and "Save all boot sectors" -->> Compression Compress All blocks online Checked "If media full" Method Optimum -->> DATAlite - Cache DATAlite cache 45k GEMDOS FAT 10k <1> GEMDOS DIR/Data 10k <1> New folder slots 10k <1> <1> Should I use the settings within DATAlite or ICDBOOT.SYS? What is your recommendation?? HELP!!!!! Jeffrey ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 96 Sat Jul 03, 1993 M.JONES52 [Jonesy] at 22:51 EDT John, Thanks for making this XBRA stuff clear. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 97 Sat Jul 03, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 22:51 EDT Jeff - You can use either the settings in the ICD Boot or DATAlite to add extra GEM buffers and they are complimentry(i.e. fi you use both you get the sum of the two). DATAlite deals with different size logical sectors seemlessly, but can't logically expand a drive beyond 32K clusters for any given sector size. This is a hard Atari system limitation that cannot be exp[anded. This has implications on how you partition you drive to get the most out of DATAlite. I.E. your 30 meg GEM partition(512 byte sectors) is almost at the maximum number of clusters that a partition can have uncompressed. So you get virtually no benifit from having DL installed on that drive since at that sector size the bigest it can make it is only 32 meg. To get the most out of DATAlite, a good rule of thumb is to partition your drive so that they have approximately 16K clusters on them, that way they can be expanded to the maxiumum 32K clusters by DATAlite. Also we suggest that you select a particular compression algorithm(we use the one that decompressess that fastest in house), If you leave the selection on optimum, then it will try each algorithm to find the best one. W erecommed that only for those that need to squeeze the last byte out of your disk. Best regards, Bob ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 98 Mon Jul 05, 1993 A.STUDER1 [Andy] at 06:53 EDT Are you shipping DataLite to your mail-order customers now? If so, I can't wait to get it on my Falcon (150 megabytes are almost gone already). From reading the stuff so far, does DataLite come with a partitioner that makes them the non-standard cluster size? I don't remember having that ability with HDX and didn't upgrade to ICD's Pro software that works without the external card, but that's on the BBS anyway and I won't be using DataLite on it until I find out if it'll work with a BBS reliably (I'm sure it would, but you know...) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 99 Mon Jul 05, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 15:44 EDT Andy - No DATAlite doesn;'t do anything "non-standard" regarding cluster sizes(in fact it's totally standard). The discussion re: cluster sizes was to a way to get the greatest amount of additional capacity out of DATAlite while working within TOS's 32K cluster limitation. The most efficient is to have partitions with ~16K or less logical clusters so that DATAlite has the ability to expand that to the 32K cluster maximum without changing the logical sector size. Sometimes in order to do that youwill need to repartition your drive with a different logical sector size. DATAlite has that capability in it's configuration accessory, however like any change in the logical disk drive structure changing the sector size will require you to restore the data to the disk(i.e. you cannot go from 512 byte sectors to 1024 byte sectors without backing up, making the change, and then restoreing) Example: Original drive is 30 Meg GEM partition with 512 byte sectors and ~ 30000 1024 byte clusters. DL2 could only expand this drive to 32 meg since TOS can only handle 32K clusters. However, it you changed the logical sector size to 1024 bytes (BGM) so each cluster is now 2048 bytes rather than 1024, DATAlite can now expand the same physical disk area to 60 Meg. because that only requires 30K 2048 byte clusters. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 100 Mon Jul 05, 1993 E.MONACO [DataBasement] at 20:35 EDT ORA, Hi guys! Just a quick question for you... I read somewhere that DATAlite replaces the bios routines? If so what kind of effect does this have on programs that read/write directly through these? I am the author of a defragmenter/optimizer which uses the rwabs (logical sectors) call for all reading and writing, is there anything that I need to be aware of so that my users don't run into unexpected problems if they try to defrag/optimize a DATAlite partition? By the way I'd just like to add as I constructively scoped you'll out at the conn. atarifest that I think you guys are first rate and the Atari market is lucky to have your support! (And if you ever need a decent Assembly/C programmer give me a holler!) ;) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 101 Mon Jul 05, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 22:39 EDT E.MONACO - DATAlite does patch Rwabs to service the systems(or application programs) request for a logical sector, retreiving the requested block, decompressing it and returning the uncompressed data in the buffer. I am also the author of a HD optimizer :-) As long as you play by the rules and make logical accesses(rather than physical ones) you'll be fine. Although, if you are operating outside of GEMDOS or doing other naughty things timing of updating the FAT tables can be crucial. In general, we recommend that people use the optimization routine built into DATAlite for optimization rather than traditional optimizers like Diamond Edge and HD Sentry. This is because although the traditional optimizer will do everything it's supposed to in terms of defragmenting the "virtual" logical disk structure, it may actually result in complicating DATAlites internal block management structure, thus actually degrading performance. It is better to use DATAlites internal optimization routine which optimizes DATAlites structures. Best regards, Bob@ORA P.S. Thank you for your compliments, we do appreciate them and do our best to provide the Atari community with high quality software and user support(clandestine observation eh... I know, you were the one in the dark sunglassess and stealth tennis shoes) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 102 Tue Jul 06, 1993 T.MCCOMB [=Tom=] at 00:22 EDT Bob- have the orders that were taken at the CT Atarifest been mailed out yet? Anxiously awaiting my copy of DataLite2. -Tom McComb ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 103 Tue Jul 06, 1993 J.WILSON103 [John] at 21:01 EDT Bob, Thought I'd bring you up to date on my excursion(s) into DATAlite 2. "IF" I boot up 'without' CodeHead Ram disk installed, I do not get the notice regards the xbra vectors. I have used the CodeHead Ram disk for a long time, and this may be unique to an MEGA ST4 with SST installed...regardless, without the Ram installed, I do not get the notice regards xbra. J_Dub ~~~~~ Tuesday, July 6, 1993 7:49:04 pm ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 104 Tue Jul 06, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 23:42 EDT Sorry Tom, However we did nail our box manufacturer's head to the floor and have a firm date of July 16 for completion of our Boxes. Shipment will begin immediately thereafter. We had a small number(20) of UK DATAlite packages shipped in directly to the KC Show which is why you see a few people with it. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 105 Wed Jul 07, 1993 E.MONACO [DataBasement] at 00:37 EDT Bob, >In general, we recommend that people use the optimization routine built into >DATAlite for optimization rather than traditional optimizers like Diamond Edge >and HD Sentry. This is because although the traditional optimizer will do >everything it's supposed to in terms of defragmenting the "virtual" logical >disk structure, it may actually result in complicating DATAlites internal >block management structure, thus actually degrading performance. It is better >to use DATAlites internal optimization routine which optimizes DATAlites >structures. I'll be sure to make a note of that in the Docs, sounds like a very slick program! >P.S. Thank you for your compliments, we do appreciate them and do our >best to provide the Atari community with high quality software and user >support(clandestine observation eh... I know, you were the one in the >dark sunglassess and stealth tennis shoes) Jeez looks as if my cloak of 'clandestine competitor' was on the fritz! (Actually I was the dude with the drool GOODIES! GOODIES! I wants me more goodies!) and the tennies... Pavement Pounder III's, complete with hazy blue neon running lights and a quick trigger "Don't Panic" button for those stressful moments! ;) Erin @ DataBasement ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 106 Wed Jul 07, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 02:15 EDT To those who do not yet have DataLITE: It should be noted that this XBRA warning message does not appear during normal background operation of DataLITE. It only appears when you open the accessory or configuration program to configure or adjust DataLITE's options. John Wilson, The CodeHead RAM Disk uses XBRA with its GEMDOS and BIOS vectors. It does not use XBRA for the keyboard interrupt, hdv_bpb, hdv_mediach, or hdv_rw. As Bob and I have mentioned, the warning message seems to be nothing more than a needless warning. There seems to be no danger. John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 107 Wed Jul 07, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 03:36 EDT Hi, I'm back and I'm still brave. I'm optimizing an "important" partition tonight. It's like the incredible shrinking data. So far, I've been able to access my Datalite partitions in TOS 2.06 and 1.2. I'm getting various reports on the amount of free space I actually have. Show Info... says there is more free space than MaxiFile would have me believe. Is there something dynamic about this? ===Tomas=== July 07, 1993 @ 0:13:39 am PDT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 108 Wed Jul 07, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 22:11 EDT Tomas - Yes, disk size reported to the system is dynamic and dependent on the setting of the parameters in the configuration ACC. The default operation of DL is to report a disk size that is the sum of the total compressed space + the total size of physically free clusters. This conservative approach will guarentee that any data added to the drive will fit even if it can;t be compressed at all. It also prevents poorly programmed disk copy programs that don;t properly check error conditions from going into never never land. You can control how DL2 reports disk size to the system via the boot sector, Getbpb, Dfree from the parameters menu of the configuration ACC, the details and implications of each are explained in the manual in great detail. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 109 Thu Jul 08, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 01:47 EDT Bob, The manual is fabulous! It goes through each setting and gives recommendations along the way. You can't ask for much more than that. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 110 Sat Jul 10, 1993 B.STOREY [Billy B.] at 06:45 EDT How does one partition a 520Mb drive to 16K clusters? Is 16K clusters the same as 16Mb partitions? I don't think Atari allows 32 partitions. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 111 Sun Jul 11, 1993 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 05:16 EDT Billy, > Is 16K clusters the same as 16Mb partitions? No. Actually, a bigger cluster size means you can have bigger (and therefore fewer) partitions, because there is a limit to the number of clusters you can have in a partition. My 213-meg drive for instance has 4K clusters because it's divided into four 53-meg partitions, which could not be done with the usual 1K clusters. 16K clusters would only be needed on HUGE drives. gnox ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 112 Sun Jul 11, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 11:52 EDT Billy, 16K clusters and 16Mb partitions are not the same. A 16Mb partition will have 512-byte sectors; two sectors make one cluster, so the clusters will be 1K (1028 bytes). The cluster size is always twice the sector size. But formatting and sectoring software does not generally deal with cluster sizes, since they are always a multiple of the sector sizes. You'll want to think of the sector sizes. Standard partitions use 512-byte sectors. The largest standard partition is 32Mb. Unfortunately, Atari's HDX creates larger-than-standard sectors whenever the partition size is larger than 16Mb. So you cannot get 512-byte sectors with HDX (to my knowledge) if partitions are larger than 16Mb. Other partitioning schemes, used by ICD and (apparently) Oregon Research, allow 32Mb partitions with 512-byte sectors, and you are much better off using these schemes. 512-byte sectors create GEM partitions. Partitions that use larger sector sizes are called BGM (Big GEM). Most software works fine with BGM partitions; the exception that comes to mind is the excellent freeware networking software, LittleNet, which I uploaded recently. 1028-byte sectors will allow 64Mb partitions; 2024-byte sectors, 128Mb partitions; 4048, 256; 8096, 512, and so on. If you want to minimize the number of partitions that a 520Mb drive is divided into, you could create a C: partition of about 8Mb and a D: of 512. My setup has a 1200Mb Toshiba drive divided into five partitions. The first is the smallest (roughly 200Mb), with four others at 256. I use three other drives for mirroring. It all works just fine. Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 113 Sun Jul 11, 1993 E.MONACO [DataBasement] at 14:10 EDT Al, >Other partitioning schemes, used by ICD and (apparently) Oregon >Research, allow 32Mb partitions with 512-byte sectors, and you >are much better off using these schemes. Supra's formatting software also will create a 32 Mb partition using 512 byte sectors. However, as it was explained to me DATAlite is limited to 32,768 Clusters. (same as TOS 1.4 and up I believe) If you formatted your partition as 32 Mb, using 512 Byte sectors DATAlite wouldn't be effective as you'd already be near the max cluster mark. (Correct me if I'm wrong guys!) To get the best performance use a 32 Mb partition formatted using 1024 byte sectors, this way DATAlite has the other 16,384 Clusters to work with. Thus it could effectively turn the 32 Mb partition into a 64 Mb one. (Again correct me if I am wrong) >1028-byte sectors will allow 64Mb partitions; 2024-byte sectors, 128Mb >partitions; 4048, 256; 8096, 512, and so on. If you want to minimize the >number of partitions that a 520Mb drive is divided into, you could create a C: >partition of about 8Mb and a D: of 512. umm, thats 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192 bytes per sector :) (Can tell I'm a byte-head eh?) Erin @ DataBasement ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 114 Sun Jul 11, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 22:18 EDT Al, I think you got those numbers mixed up. It should be 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, etc. Databasement, 32,768 clusters is for TOSes less than TOS 1.4. Tos 1.4 and up allowed for 32 meg (65536 clusters) partitions. ICD's software (I don't know about Atari's as it doesn't even have the honor of coming anywhere near my drives) allows for... Sector Size | Cluster Size | Max. partition size ------------------------------------------------- 512 | 1024 | 32 meg. 1024 | 2048 | 64 meg. 2048 | 4096 | 128 meg. 4096 | 8192 | 256 meg. 8192 | 16384 | 512 meg. These increments are the only thing allowed in ICD's driver software. 8192 byte sectors really eats up the ram for the cache. :-) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 115 Mon Jul 12, 1993 E.MONACO [DataBasement] at 01:27 EDT Wayne, >Databasement, > 32,768 clusters is for TOSes less than TOS 1.4. Tos 1.4 and up allowed for >32 meg (65536 clusters) partitions. I think TOS < 1.4 only allowed for 16,384 clusters. And TOS's >= 1.4 allowed 32,768 clusters. To get 65,536 clusters to = 32 Mb you'd need a sector size of 256 bytes. (256 bytes * 2 sectors per cluster * 65536 clusters = 32 Mb ) As far as I know the max allowable clusters is limited to a signed word (ie; 32,768) because thats what the bios perameter block returns.... 9 words: 0 recsiz # bytes per sector 1 clsiz # sectors per cluster (must be 2) 2 clsizb # bytes per cluster (same as recsiz * clsiz) 3 rdlen length of root dir. in sectors 4 fsiz FAT size is sectors 5 fatrec second FAT's starting sector # 6 datrec sector # of the first data cluster *7 numcl # data clusters 8 bflags bitflag for FAT entry size (0 = 12 bits, 1 = 16 bits) Also the boot sector reserves 1 word for the # sectors available. unsigned that'd be 65536 max sectors... divide by 2 sectors per cluster gives you max of 32768 clusters. > Sector Size | Cluster Size | Max. partition size > ------------------------------------------------- > 512 | 1024 | 32 meg. ^---------------^---------------^------ Thats right. But do your math? (1024 bytes per cluster * 65536 clusters = 64 Mb) Doesn't hold up. > 1024 | 2048 | 64 meg. > 2048 | 4096 | 128 meg. > 4096 | 8192 | 256 meg. > 8192 | 16384 | 512 meg. I have a TOS 1.62 STE and if I format a partition to say 41.98 Mb the OS will only see something like 9 Mb or so. Because it'd need more than 32,768 clusters using 512 byte sector sizes. Which is the only size my software seems to support. When I refer to 65536 sectors being the max I of course mean logical sectors, thus 65536 logical sectors * 8192 bytes per logical sector = 512 Mb. (which I believe is the max a partition can be) also this gives you 32,768 clusters. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 116 Mon Jul 12, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 03:33 EDT Bob, I've been using DATAlite 2 since the Kansas City Show and I gotta tell you I'm pretty impressed. Both with the product and your company. Congratulations on another hit. Now that I have larger partitions I wonder how I'll be able to get a partition onto a single FD-10 floppy? Can I use DATAlite on a Diamond Back partition? Naw, that'd be too simple. ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 117 Mon Jul 12, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 05:25 EDT Databasement, Yea, I am not used to someone talking in clusters and I guess I read sectors in your message instead. You are correct about that. TOS 1.4 and above allowed for 65536 sectors and that is what the table I entered is based on, not clusters. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 118 Mon Jul 12, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 18:04 EDT Wayne, Yep, clusters and sectors were getting mixed up in here. Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 119 Mon Jul 12, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 20:12 EDT Bill - You can keep to the 16K clusters by increasing th logical size of sectors. 1 Cluster = 2 Sectors on a Atari hard disk a physical sector is 512 bytes. To get larger partitions and still stay within the TOS limitation of 32K maximun clusters, several(actuall powers of 2) sectors are combined into larger "logical" sectors. These are called BGM partitions. Within certain limitations you can just keep increasing the size of th logical sectors untill you get the size of partition you want while maintaining less then 16K clusters. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 120 Mon Jul 12, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 20:26 EDT You have it right Erin. Best regards, Bob@ORA*s ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 121 Mon Jul 12, 1993 J.KRZYSZTOW [JEFFREY] at 20:55 EDT Bob, Just wanted you to know that I got DATAlite2 up and working perfectly. I hope the Codeheads will provide an update to MultiDesk Deluxe to alleviate the XBRA warnings!! Hint, hint 8)! Jeffrey ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 122 Tue Jul 13, 1993 E.MONACO [DataBasement] at 03:32 EDT Bob, Is there any product that you know of that will allow you to CHOOSE which logical sector size you wish to use? My supra software only allows for 512 Byte sectors. (Its not the newest version so I'll drop them a note about it too.) Erin @ DataBasement ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 123 Tue Jul 13, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 05:24 EST Erin, The ICD software allows you to choose the sizes, by the expedient of setting the size of the partition. I don't recall seeing a specific setting for the logical sector size, but you can calculate it from the size of the partition. I prefer to have MORE PARTITIONS rather than going larger than 16 meg, to maintain compatibility, and reduce possible damage from loss of a partition. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 124 Tue Jul 13, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 07:05 EDT I think that some of the confusion about the cluster size has been in Bob's reference to "16K clusters". He means a quantity of 16,000 clusters, not clusters 16K in size. The whole idea here is to make your sector size large enough so that the number of clusters is 16,000 (actually 16,384) or less. This allows DATAlite 2 to double the size of your drive without exceeding the 32K limit. (I hope I've got this right). Erin, ICD's software allows you to select your sector size. For my money, it's the only Atari hard drive software to use. If you have ICD hardware, the software is free. Otherwise, you can purchase their PRO package directly. John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 125 Tue Jul 13, 1993 B.STOREY [Billy B.] at 08:04 EDT Al, thanks for the info! I had to reformat my drive after recieving LittleNet, which I use constantly. I use it to access my BBS drives. I was curious how one could partition a 520 Mb drive with none > drive P(?), and keep 16 MB partitions. I use ICD, so I was able to get larger partitions, but I don't like having that many. Maybe they will change Littlenet. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 126 Tue Jul 13, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 11:52 EDT Oops, Ron's right. ICD software supports larger sector sizes, but it sets them automatically. It doesn't allow you to set them directly. One thing you could do is make your partitions 17 or 33 meg. This would allow DATAlite 2 to expand them to 32 or 64 meg respectively. John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 127 Tue Jul 13, 1993 J.WILSON103 [John] at 20:33 EDT Bob, Well, I 'finally' got DATAlite 2 installed (one partition only), but I will be continuing on, now that I am having no problems. I do have a question...using the graphical display in Maxifile, I show 8,474,619 bytes available on the partition I dietized. If I switch to Diamond Edge and utilize its graphical display, it shows 19,353,600 bytes free on the partition I dietized. Can you explain this? I must say, up to this point, I am very very satisfied, even though it did take me some time to git up the courage (g). Thanks for a wonderful program! John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 128 Tue Jul 13, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 21:25 EDT ICD also has a program called DESKTOP.PRG that can also be ran as an ACC. It will allow you to swap out partitions > P to P or less. When you get done with what you want to do, you can swap them back. This allows you to use partitions > P. ICD's software (HDUTIL.PRG) allows you to set up the booter for different size clusters. I cranked up the sector size to 8192 and my cache would have taken up over 2 megs. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 129 Tue Jul 13, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 23:12 EDT Erin, The Supra software has not been updated for a long time. Diamond Edge automatically chooses the smallest possible logical sector size given the version of TOS installed in the machine and teh size fo the requested partition. Hoever, it's a great suggestion to make it user configurable. You can choose the logical sector size that you want from within the DATAlite configuration ACC. However, changing the logical sector size of a partition is a destructive process(i.e. all existing data on the drive is detroyed) John Wilson (for one thing the drive is not dietized :-) The other, DE always reports the theoretical maximum on a DATAlite drive to give a consistant reading(DE and DL2 know about each other). Whereas other programs like MaxiFile are getting their information from Dfree and other functions report a disk size that is dynamic and depends on the way you have your Parameters set up in the configuration. Please refer to your maunual for a detailed description of each of the options and their effect on the reported disk size. If you have difficulty understanding th implications of any of the options please let us know adn we'll be happy to explain them. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 130 Wed Jul 14, 1993 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 00:19 EDT Bob, I see posting about DataLite 2, I think I've asked this once before but don't remember seing an answer. Do you have the Manuals, can we order now, are the CAF 93 show specials still available? Thanks John B. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 131 Wed Jul 14, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:25 EDT Billy, Actually, you can use ICD's software and switch active partitions if you want to keep them down to 32 megs. (Not 16! Note that ICD's partitioning scheme isn't like Atari's, so you can 512-byte sectors and 32-meg partitions.) But probably the only valid way to keep using LittleNet and still have sensible partitions with a large HD is to make one of them 32 megs, so that the other computer can at least get at that one. Wayne, I'd better look at my cache usage. It's 1.5 megs now anyway, without doing a lot of fancy stuff. I *do* use a large write buffer, since that speeds up the write-verify operations. One disappointment is that the 512K cache built into my Toshiba drive does not help the ICD cache at all (in terms of taking the load off). Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 132 Wed Jul 14, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 06:01 EDT Wayne, That function of HDUTIL.PRG is setting the sector size that the software will recognize. It must be set to the largest size in your system. It doesn't change the sector size of any of your partitions. John ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 133 Wed Jul 14, 1993 E.MONACO [DataBasement] at 06:17 EDT Ron, Bob, Wayne, and John; Thanks regarding changing logical sector sizes and software. Erin @ DataBasement ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 134 Wed Jul 14, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 06:46 EST Al, WOW! A 1.5 meg cache.... What FOR? I experimented with various sizes of cache and found little improvement in operations with any reasonable size cache (never tried one THAT big though), over and above the built-in 32k one in my drive. I know that your usage patterns greatly affect the usefulness of a cache, but do you really get 1.5 megs worth of speedup in return? My 'hit rate' with up to 200k was only in the 15% range over several days usage... ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 135 Wed Jul 14, 1993 OUTRIDER [Terry] at 11:01 EDT Does DL2 work on floppies? If so, what kind of compression could I expect? ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 136 Wed Jul 14, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 20:36 EDT Thanks John, I wasn't exactly sure what all was involved with HDUTIL.PRG. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 137 Wed Jul 14, 1993 J.WILSON103 [John] at 21:00 EDT >John Wilson (for one thing the drive is not dietized :-) Bob, I profusely apoligize for my choice of words....believe it or not, I have never utilized the 'other' product, but I indeed read about it, and evidently had it in my mind...I intentionally held out for DATAlite 2 based on your reputation and previous releases. FYI, I went whole-hog today, and installed DATAlite 2 on all remaining partitions (minus the boot partition)....gawd I love this program! I am rolling with a 100 meg drive!!!! Thanks again for a wonderful program. John p.s. Anyone reading this that needs more hard drive space, you owe it to yourself to get this program! ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 138 Wed Jul 14, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 23:26 EDT Actually, HDUTIL recognizes the sector sizes without any need for the user to set the size in the box. The only function of that user-configurable size is to alert the software that a removeable disk that may be placed into the HD chain later will have a larger sector size than the partitions currently in the system. Al Ron, I dunno. I'd love to back off on the cache size. I'll keep experimenting. But with 1400 megs on line, the cache gets a workout. My PC's cache is larger, BTW. Al ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 139 Thu Jul 15, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 01:08 EDT Outrider, Yes, Datalite can be used on floppies, with about the same compression as for Hard Drives. Robb at ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 140 Sat Jul 17, 1993 M.SHANNON [Morgan] at 12:25 EDT Ron, I'm into the 1mb cache bracket and my CACHE-HITs are about 80% or above most of the time (I HAVE A 200MB HD AND A 4MB 1040ST) Morgan ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 141 Sat Jul 17, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 14:35 EST Morgan, Just how valuable a cache is depends largely on how you use the computer. If you do heavy disk-resident database work, a cache will get lots of hits, and save you a lot of time (and HD wear), but if you just load the whole database into ram and save it when you are done with the work, the cache is much less valuable. In my case, usage patterns just don't make the cache very useful. Of course, I might get better hits with 1 meg, but I really have better uses for my ram. Maybe when I get a Falcon.... (14meg) ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 142 Sat Jul 17, 1993 M.SHANNON [Morgan] at 17:31 EDT Ron, I'm into the 1mb cache bracket and my CACHE-HITs are about 80% or above most of the time (I HAVE A 200MB HD AND A 4MB 1040ST) Morgan ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 143 Sat Jul 17, 1993 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 21:19 EDT I've ordered DATAlite two and very much looking forward to having more space on my very loaded Megafile 30. This will breath new life in it until I get something better. I was wondering. Since I know nothing about sectors/partitions and everything else that is being discussed here, is it easy for the non technical to follow instructions to install Datalite so that it works properly. I don't fee like taking a course in computer sience. I am presently using a 10meg and 20 meg partition. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 144 Mon Jul 19, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 02:40 EDT See Flat, Don't worry, the installation is very easy, and with the manual, very self explanatory, BTW, though, we INSIST you read the manual in order to understand a Little (really, only just a little ) about discs and their structure, but after installed, you can forget it's there. Robb @ ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 145 Mon Jul 19, 1993 T.MCCOMB [=Tom=] at 11:09 EDT Bob- has the orders from CAF (CT Show) started shipping yet? -Tom McComb {10:54 am} Monday, July 19, 1993 ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 146 Mon Jul 19, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 21:11 EDT Bob, Have you decided whether or not you are going to go to the Asheville show? Just wondering so I'll know whether or not to bring my disk for upgrade and some extra cash for HS Pascal and possibly DataLite II. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 147 Tue Jul 20, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 02:47 EDT "The Eagle has landed" We FINALLY received shipments of our product box for DATAlite late today. We will begin production tomorrow and should begin shipping by the end of the week. Orders will be filled in the order of receipt, and we are few but hardy workers so plase be patient. Re; Ashville. Regretably, alternative travel plans for business negotiations will prevent our attendance at the Ashville show. However, we are shipping Sheldon a box of merchandise to represent us as well as some door prizes. There will be DATAlite at the show available from Sheldon. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 148 Tue Jul 20, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 05:28 EDT Bob, Sorry to hear about that. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 149 Thu Jul 29, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 21:50 EDT Bob, I picked up DataLite 2 and I have a couple of things I would like to ask about or mention that I think needs to be thought about, added, etc. First off, I would like to say that I do like the program and all. I believe I can trust my data to DataLite MUCH more than I could DataDiet. The program is nice and I like the way it was implemented versus DataDiet. The first thing is, could a way to increase the number (using the arrows) be added to increase them by 100 like you do using the shift-click to increase by 10? Maybe use something like control-click. If I go from 32766 to 65535, it can take awhile. When I was setting up DataLite 2, I read the manual before I even attempted to do anything. I then went to set up a partition and I ended up having to increase the sector size. Well, it did like it was supposed to and rebooted the computer. The only thing is that nowhere in the manual did it say that I would have to go through the partition setup again by selecting the Newly Compress option once again. I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out what I may have done wrong or what program may be interfering with it. I finally decided to give it a shot. Lo and behold, I found that this is what you need to do. Maybe you might want to add this information to the README file. I believe the speed of the compression routines need to be made faster. Saving a 62K file from within AtariWorks using the 'Optimum' setting, it took 11.5 minutes to save it. I don't know if this goes along with the next item or not. In the 'Optimize' section, the 'No Break' selection should be just that. The manual states that it will still pause between blocks to give other processes some CPU time. I believe this selection should be a TRUE 'No Break' selection. If I select it, I am telling it that I want it to use ALL the CPU time to do it's compression. Other than the above, the program works real nice and I like being able to manually control things and be able to set up the program to react the way I want it to to suite my taste needs, etc. It really is a fine program. It just needs a little bit of polishing. I feel that I can trust my data to it. I spent about 8 hours playing with the program (a lot of that spent compressing stuff) to get a feal for how it responds and reacts to different file types and just the overall feel of the program. I suggest anyone that gets DataLite to play around with it to get a feel for it. It can save you some time later down the road. Please take the above as positive feedback. That is all it was meant to be and not critisism. Thanks for a fine progam. BTW, I have version 2.16 running on a MSTE in '16mhz cache' mode. My drive is set up for 1024 byte sectors with 65535 sectors and 100K DATAlite cache. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 150 Fri Jul 30, 1993 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 07:26 EDT Wayne, > Saving a 62K file from within AtariWorks using the 'Optimum' setting, > it took 11.5 minutes to save it. Surely you jest! Did you mean 62 meg? ;) Or 11.5 seconds? Actually even 11.5 seconds is a long wait for a 62K file. gnox ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 151 Fri Jul 30, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 20:12 EDT Nope, it took 11.5 minutes to save a 62K file using the Optimum setting. It took 30 seconds to save the same file with no compression and then going into DATAlite and doing an Optimize. Using the quickest compression method, it took 1 min. 10 sec. I suggest you save stuff uncompressed and then go back later and do an Optimize which seems to compress a lot faster and on larger chunks. All in all, I still like DATAlite. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 152 Fri Jul 30, 1993 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 20:34 EDT Wayne, something sounds terribly wrong. DATAlite is claimed to be totaly transparent. I take this to mean you don't notice any difference in storage and retrieval speed. Bob actually told me that in certain cases disk access was actually speeded up when using DATAlite. I hope someone will comment on your statements. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 153 Fri Jul 30, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 20:50 EDT The "optimum" setting is only recommended for those who have to squeze every last byte out of their disk. It will actually compress the data with every algorithm before writing to find out which will work best. This means everything gets compressed 4 or 5 times. It is better to select the algorithm that suits your usage pattern and stick with that. It is also sensative the the size of the DL cache that you give it. The implications of all the settins on your performance is all explained in great detail in the manual. Best regards, Bob P.S. If it takes 30 seconds to save a 62K file without compression you have something else effecting your disk performance. You might try adding some GEMDOS FAT and DIR buffers to help speed up GEMDOS operations. This is especially useful if you are using Atari's hard disk driver which is quite slow without the cache buffers added. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 154 Fri Jul 30, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 23:26 EDT Bob, I have ICD's cache setup for the TOS DATA and FAT. I have to disable their disk cache when using DATAlite as it bombs. I have the disk cache in DATAlite set to 100K. The 30 seconds I quoted was the time to save the file from within AW (8.5 sec.) plus the time it took to do an 'Optimize' in the DATAlite accessory. The 2 times added up to 30 sec. I figured the 'Optimum' setting was taking a little longer since it had to figure out which was the best method of compression for that file. When I chose 'LZSSWorm' it only took 10 min. 55 sec. I will try disabling everything including all of ICD's caches to see how it does. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 155 Sat Jul 31, 1993 T.MCCOMB [=Tom=] at 02:42 EDT Bob- Did you ship my copy of DataLite2 yet? (from CtAF) -Tom McComb {2:33 am} Saturday, July 31, 1993 ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 156 Sat Jul 31, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 14:24 EDT Ok, after time to play with DATAlite some more, I have found out that it is not necessarily DATAlite causing the slow speed. It is either the program that I am running or the combination of the two. I got time to do some more test and found that it depends on the program you are running on how fast the compression is. The test was done using a MSTE in 16mhz cache mode (8mhz is about twice as slow) and using LZSSworm compression (which is the best for these type of files). The files were normal files for the apprpriate program. AtariWorks STW 62K doc. took 11 minutes to save. Word Writer ST 84K doc. took 2 min. 12 sec. to save. Tempus II using the Word Writer ST 84K doc. took 7 sec. to save. GFA Basic 380K GFA file took 41 sec. to save. As you can see, it depends on the program. I now know to not use compression when saving an AtariWorks file and just go back later and do an 'Optimize' from the DATAlite .ACC. I can handle Word Writers speed but, may also 'Optimize' at a later time. Using Tempus II and GFA, etc. I can definately live with the speed in saving these files using LZSSworm compression. Using the Optimum setting only took a little more time with the above test. DATAlite can definately handle the speed at which programs are sent to the disk as it handled the file with no problems using Tempus II which only took 7 sec. to save using LZSSworm (best compression). It obviously has to do with how things are sent to the disk, etc. I don't know what is going on in AtariWorks to cause such a slowdown. Now that I definately know it is program related and not DATAlite related, I can go from there. I guess it is time to set up my HD partitions as DATAlite partitions. I have been doing these test on a Syquest cart. The only thing is that I will loose the ICD cache for partitions that I do not set up as DATAlite partitions. DATAlite is definately worth checking into. I typically get a 150 - 200%+ increase in my disk storage. If you get it, I advise taking some time out and learning DATAlite and what works best for you. Also learn what programs work well with it as I described above. I really like the fact that DATAlite allows me the flexability to set it up as I need. If I need to save an AtariWorks doc., I can turn auto-compression off and go back later and optimize it. With other programs, I can turn auto- compression on and not worry about it. DATAlite offers a lot of flexability like this. You can customize it to your needs and so far has been very safe. I haven't found a program that interfers with it or one that DATAlite interfers with. The only problems with other programs is as stated above. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 157 Sat Jul 31, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 16:58 EDT One other thing, PLEASE have them to get rid of that XBRA warning. It is a pain in the rear. I know it doesn't affect anything. It's just an annoyance. It's one more click I have to go through to get to what I want to do. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 158 Sat Jul 31, 1993 T.HORNIG [Thomas] at 17:15 EDT Regarding the slow down: I received Datalite II yesterday and installed it with no (real) problems. When I load Pagestream it takes now 20 seconds! to load the program alone. Before Datalite it took 6 seconds! I already tried different compression methods and different cache sizes with no difference. Same with TrackerST which takes now over a minute to load. By the way I'm using ICD's driver and so far my system has not crashed. Thomas ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 159 Sun Aug 01, 1993 L.DOWDLE1 [Scott Dowdle] at 00:09 EDT Hello DATAlite 2 Users, My package just arrived yesterday and after reading the manually very closely a few times (grin) I've been playing around with the different configurations... compression types, caches, etc. I must say that I am impressed by the multitasking-ness of the program... different functions of the program can be accessed even while it is busy compressing. I have to agree that I am disappointed by the slowness of DATAlite. I've decided to Compress Manually offline myself. I've Optimized for speed but it is still slow when loading. Oh, decent sized programs don't seem to take that long to load but when loading such large things as the Greek New Testament as a second translation into SpiritWare's Concordance 3... well, it really loads slowly! That particular situation is about the only annoyance I have. I'm sure I can tweek the configuration some more to get better system performance. Heck, I'm still at 8MHz so I can't expect much can I? Neither the manual nor the README on the disk said anything about the ICD hard disk driver software. I'm using the Link version (I forget the exact version number but it's the most recent I think?) and I'm unsure how I should configure the various cache options of the ICD boot software when faced with DATAlite's caching options. Can I turn off all of the ICD stuff and let DATAlite handle everything or does the ICD superceed? Please advise! I do feel that the program is rock solid but I wish it were a little faster. I can't compare it to Datadiet 2 because I've never used it. Is it any faster? TYL, Scott ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 160 Sun Aug 01, 1993 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 07:26 EDT Scott, > I do feel that the program is rock solid but I wish it were a little > faster. I can't compare it to Datadiet 2 because I've never used it. > Is it any faster? The simple answer is `yes', but the simple answer may not be fair. For Datalite I can only go by what's reported here, and it may be a long time before we can see valid comparisons (i.e. by someone who uses both on the same system). You can't switch easily from one to the other like you can with, say, word processors - besides, both are apparently "rock solid", so if you use one of them already, there's not much incentive to spend $80 on the other. Anyway, I'll put my non-simple answer to your question above in the Data Diet topic (Cat 12 Top 2). gnox ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 161 Sun Aug 01, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 08:59 EDT **** LONG POST **** Scott, On my system, I have to disable ICD's disk cache. I was doing it by hitting ESC at bootup but, I have permanently disabled the read/write caches as I plan on making a DATAlite partition onto my fixed HDs. If I didn't disable the read/write cache, I would get bombs. Now, when I went to permanently disable the ICD caches, I had set the TOS DATA and FAT caches (in ICD's driver) to 0. This did not work as I could not get a dir of the DATAlite partitions from the desktop nor would any files show up on the DATAlite partitions from a file selector. I went back in and placed a 1 in ICD's TOS DATA and FAT cache fields and all worked fine. I will probably increase this. It seems to me that the ICD driver has priority. You are correct in that the manual doesn't say anything about ICD's driver software. I find this very lacking as ICD's driver is the most popular and best driver around. Don't even suggest I use Atari's driver software as I will NOT allow it on my system. If you set up the ICD driver software as above, there shouldn't be a problem. The only problem seems to be between DATAlite's disk cache and ICD's read/write caches. Turn off ICD's read/write caches and all will be fine. DATAlite should be made to work with ICD's driver as I would like to have it for those partitions that I do not set up as DATAlite partitions but, I can live without the ICD caches for now in order to gain the benifits from DATAlite. As far as the slowdown in loading programs and such, this is to be expected. It doesn't seem to be too slow using the LZSSworm compression when loading programs and information. The loading is definately much faster than I expected. Now if the saving would be as fast. :-) You just have to weigh the benifits of more storage room with slower load times. What you can do to speed loading of programs is install the programs onto a partition that is not set up as a DATAlite partition and have the other files (DOCs, etc.) on a DATAlite partition. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 162 Sun Aug 01, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 13:30 EDT I would trust DATAlite over Data Diet. Noticed I said 'I'. I never bought Data Diet as I didn't trust my data to the way the were doing it. I have heard horror stories about lost data and setup. DATAlite is easy to set up (minus the few omissions in the manual). I feal that it also is safer to use. When I was trying a copying program, it crashed when writing to the DATAlite partition and my DATAlite partition was still in fine shape. The only thing you want to avoid is those copying programs that write directly to the HD. Cheetah will work fine as long as you do not try to write to a DATAlite partition with auto-compression turned on. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 163 Sun Aug 01, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 16:49 EDT Wayne Watson > When I was trying a copying program, it crashed when writing to the >DATAlite partition and my DATAlite partition was still in fine shape. I have had the same thing with DD and no problem. Anyway, let's discuss DL 2 here. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Sunday 01 August 1993 at 05:09 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 164 Mon Aug 02, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 01:18 EDT Wayne, If you are saving to a Datalite partition with autosave on, you should not have to 'Optimise' after each save. This is for the first-time setup to compress all the current files that were already on the drive. If you are doing compression manually, you really do not need to do this after each new save, maybe once a day at the end of you session or so. Hope this helps! Thomas, Some speed loss is to be expected with a program such as Pagestream, which loads many import and export drivers upon execution, try the third option on the config, which has the slowest write speed, but the fastest read. Robb @ ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 165 Mon Aug 02, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 03:15 EDT You know, it's the darnest thing. I went into Cheatah to do some moving around of files and forgot I had temporarily switched DATAlite to the auto- compress mode (Data Complete Online) and it worked this time. Took longer but, it worked. Strange, must have been garbage earlier or my settings. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 166 Mon Aug 02, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 03:43 EDT Bob, Yep, I only Optimize after a save with Manually Offline selected. I have been doing a lot of Optimizing after saving because I have been playing with it and getting to know it, so to speak. After I get comfortable with it and all, I will probably end up doing as you say and only Optimize once a day or whatever. Thanks for the advice. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 167 Mon Aug 02, 1993 ORA [Bob] at 13:53 EDT Wayne, The use of Cheetah is done at you own risk. We have too many confirmed reports of problems resulting from it's use to endorse it. Best regards, Bob@ORA ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 168 Mon Aug 02, 1993 EXPLORER.5 [Robert Goff] at 23:42 EDT Has DL2 been released for general consumption? I must have been asleep, 'cause I missed it. |) | |)O|) Robert Goff ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 169 Tue Aug 03, 1993 NTACTONE [Ron Hunter] at 00:15 EST >> The use of Cheetah is done at you own risk. We have too many << >>confirmed reports of problems resulting from it's use to endorse << >>it. Best regards, Bob@ORA << You can add me to the list of 'horror stories' about Cheetah. Lost TWO partitions to it once, even the SOURCE partition was trashed. NEVER will it reside on my HD again. ------------ Category 33, Topic 16 Message 170 Tue Aug 03, 1993 M.SHANNON [Morgan] at 00:52 EDT Bob, Is that "confirmed (CHEETAH) reports" with DataLITE or just CHEETAH by itself? (as I have used CHEETAH3 religiously for about three years and had NO data loss or transfer problems whatsoever). I'd like to know 'cause I have DataLITE "on the way" Morgan ------------