#IPAs
I repeats: we've been using DoubleSpace for months (we were a DOS 6
beta tester, so we've been using it since before DOS 6 was released) on a
network of six PCs doing lots of disk access and have had NO corruption of
data to date that was traceable to DoubleSpace itself.
The problems attributed to DoubleSpace are actually caused by the
elevator-seeking write-back caching in SmartDrive, and would happen with
Stacker or SuperStor or any other disk compression as well when using any
cache that has elevator-seeking write-back caching. Either turn off the
write-back caching for the compressed drives, or be sure to flush the cache
before powering off ("SMARTDRV /C"), or get DOS 6.2 or the SmartDrive patch
available here on CompuServe which upgrades SmartDrive to do an automatic
write cache flush whenever a program exits to DOS and before you see the
DOS prompt.
I won't sit here and see DoubleSpace blamed for things which are not its
fault. DoubleSpace is FINE. FINE!! So long as you use the same common
sense you would use with floppy disks (don't pull the disk out of the drive
when the computer is writing to it — that's the same thing as turning off
the computer without flushing the cache), it's FINE. By the way, write
caching can also harm NON-compressed drives. It's just more likely to have
serious consequences for compressed ones since the loss of a few bytes can
render the whole volume unusable by trashing the compression directory.
Again, this also goes for Stacker, SuperStor, or ANY other compression
technique! The problems that happen when you don't flush the cache on a
non-compressed drive are usually limited to "lost chains" and maybe a
cross-linked file or two.