CompuServe Messages

Ian, Welcome, I guess, to the PAR Survivors Society. Although it may not be a comfort, you are not alone. There are many of us. We walk at night. We are everywhere but, in the eyes of DPS, we don't exist. Ian, the truth is that PAR disasters are a common occurance — particularly when a disk gets rather full. If you call DPS and report your problem, you will find that they pretend that you are the only person who has ever had such a problem. At best, the will blame the hard disk. The susceptability of the PAR to crash-and-trash is, I believe, due to the PAR's very fragile and inadequate FAT system which simply cannot handle complex file structures. Unlike a standard hard disk which has two separate FAT's, the PAR only has one and when it gets messed-up, everything is gone. The only way to deal with the PAR is to accept it for what it is and to know that it cannot be trusted. For, in spite of its high-tech exterior and often beguiling performance, it is only a weak, insecure little techno-child prone to break down and sob when stressed. One you accept this, you have taken the first step toward peaceful coexistence with the PAR. Here's what you must do: 1. Back up all your PAR .ani files before you do any work with the PAR. Hard disks are pretty cheap now, you might want to get a HD at least as large as your PAR drive just for .ani file backups. I also use a DAT tape to directly backup and restore the .ani files (using Tapedisk). 2. Format the PAR drive often and PROPERLY. Very few people know this but the PAR software has three _different_ format protocols: One is found in the PAR preferences menu; another in the Partest utility; and the third is the ONLY method of actually formatting your PAR drive: use the command line FORMAT command which Gus wrote that actually overwrites all sectors with zero's. The top-secret, undocumented (and unknown to most DPS personnel) is: PARDRV /FORMAT:M (M for Master drive; S for slave drive) 3. Always use the full eight characters for .ani file names. Don't use the numerals after identical letters for different files: the PAR will think they are all part of the same file (e.g.'s, don't use "new1" and then "new2" or "house" and then "house2".) 4. Keep a fan blowing directly on the PAR drive (especially if its a Micropolis). 5. Try not to have the PAR drive full. Before a big job, backup all the ani's you need to keep and format the drive and then work with just the files you need for that job. Don't try to store old .ani files on the PAR drive, use it only for active projects. Remember that deleted PAR files are not really deleted. If you load new ones with the same name as the old "deleted" files, occasionally some "deleted" frames will get mixed up with the new ones: boom. May Your .ANI's Ever Be Together, my son. Alec Jason