CompuServe Messages

John, With QuarterBack TOOLS v1.00 it took 2.75 hours to OPTIMIZE (DeFrag) a 50 meg Hard Drive with 1meg ChipRam & 4megs FastRam. However, I just received my "TOOLS" update v1.2a and Central Coast Software says that OPTIMIZING will run a bit FASTER now — what that means I have yet to test. With Disk Mechanic v2.5 (I haven't used BAD in many moons since Disk Mechanic v2.5 IMHO, it's better than BAD) takes about 1.5 hours for the same hard drive. NO! NO, your Hard Drive would NOT be DE-FRAGED or OPTIMIZED if you deleted everthing and did a complete restore simply because of the way AmigaDos' FileSystem handles writing the files to your Hard Drive (this would not accomplish a thing). Using Bad, Disk Mechanic, or QuarterBack TOOLS will TOTALLY Re-Organize the way your files are written to your Hard Drive which allows your Hard Drive to Access & Load them much MUCH much FASTER! The advertising claims are improvements as much as 400% !!! After purchasing QuarterBack "TOOLS" I did a comparison test on my DH0: partion (25meg) with Disk Mechanic v2.5 and QuarterBack "TOOLS" v1.00 and found that QuaterBack "TOOLS" v1.00 took more than twice the time to do the job, it in FACT, did a much more COMPLETE job, than Disk Mechanic and that there was a SLIGHT noticeable improvement in SPEED of DISK ACCESS times. Optimizing is not the only function of QuarterBack "TOOLS" nor is it the reason why I purchased it. "TOOLS" has a Hard Drive REPAIR function that will help you repair Bad Blocks, and Recover from the DREADED DH0: not validated System message. Both of which I have had the opportunity to use in "TOOLS" v1.00 and has saved me about 20 hours of Low-Level Formatting, Hard Drive reconstruction and reconstruction of lost files. These features alone, IMHO, make "TOOLS" worth MUCH more than the retail price. — Gary Lucas —