#dos 6 compression
12 messages in this thread
I have heard bad things of the Stacker problem before. I have always
been paranoid of compression. My first depressed compression
depression came from when I was using compression on my backups and
my backup FAT got scrambled when I went to reinstall after a crash.
Man I was sick. Since then, all of my back-ups have been of the file
by file nature.
I did indeed get brave with DOS 6.0 and the dblspace routine. Hard
pressed for space, I gambled it. I have a WD CAVIAR2000 213 mb hard
drive. It is now 400 Mb using dblspace. As you mention though, there
does seem to be extra maintnance regarding defragmentation, it has to
be done often and it takes a long long time. That always scares the
gee-whilickers? out of me as well because during the defrag process,
all it takes is a good brown out and you can kiss it all good by and
just start reinstalling
I will have to purchase a UPS just to keep my sanity I believe.
Merlin
Merlin,
at least you know what you're getting into, so that makes me feel better. It's
the people who glibly think they can get twice the disk space (I only averaged
1.6 times more) for no tradeoff that worry me. The tradeoff being increased
maintenance and something else to go wrong with potentially disastrous results.
Martin:
I try and only stack the drives I keep PROGRAMS on, while keeping my data on
unstacked drives. Software only drives don't need backing up often, and with
programs like WP 6.0 wanting 17 MB for a full install, compression DOES help a
bit.
Dave
David,
that's not a bad idea. It will take a long time before I go back to that sort
of disk compression, though, if ever.
Martin,
I've been using stacker for a few months witout any problems. Even crashes
caused by power glitches and unstable games don't seem to phase it. I used to
hate the idea of disk compression (That's NOT why I got an 877MB scsi-2 hard
drive!) but then I got to thinking about all those files that applications
(even 3DS) install that never ever get accessed, but I don't have the time to
go around and delete them. I keep a stacked c: drive (400 "virtual" mb) for
applications and the d: drive (over 600mb unstacked) is for frames, images, and
.flcs.
Bailey
Bailey,
I'll add you to my prayers at night <g>.
One thing I don't plan on doing is ever stacking my C: drive, thank you! I've
had problems that way before, and don't care to repeat them, thanks.
Dave <once-bitten…> Rhoten
Dittos from me on stacking a c drive David. I like the boot drive unstacked.
but only have had two complaints on stacking the 3DS drive and a third tga's
drive. rebooting and realocation counting takes a long time. Stacking a drive
for digitizing video frames doesn't work because digitized video just doesn't
compress much. It gives you a false sense of capacity at the default stacker
setting.
Don,
The main problem I have with stacking c: is the confusion about where
config.sys and autoexec.bat really are. Yes, that allocation counting when
booting with a "dirty" stacker filesystem is really painfully time consuming.
Reminds me of fsck on a unix system.
Bailey
At my office I stacked the C drive and because it (C) really doesn't
change much it hasn't been much of a problem. On my workstation,
however, I have four different startup batch files that I use
depending which hardware/ software I need. eg. Action Animator won't
start with QEMM 7.01but likes QEMM 6 or DOS Himem.sys. Always
changing the c: startup and the size of my windows swap file prompted
me to leave stacker off of the c: drive. I have three physicals
currently and just ordered a 1.3 Gig SCSI II with an adaptec adapter.
I don't plan on stacking the 1.3 drive because its for frame grabbing
and as such won't compress anyway. Personnally, I never had the
nightmares using stacker that I heard on this forum, however I did
have a few close calls. Saved by good backup discipline. I have a
hard time remembering to only use the stacker utilities on those
drives. When changing a config.sys and autoexec.bat ALWAYS use the F9
to update the dupe files when prompted or you can indeed quickly
loose track of what's what especially when using QEMM's optimize.
Somewhat like playing 3D chess while viewing the boards through a
mirror.
PMJI, but I avioded the whole startup file thing (dual config.sys and A.bat) by
simply REMing the stacker SSWAP line in the config.sys. What this does is
simply gives you back your C: drive and leaves it alone. Your machine boots up
and leaves you on your boot drive until you change to your stacked drive (which
is now D: or whatever it was swapping C: with). Since I was constantly changing
my startup files, this made my life much easier, considering that I only had
one set to change now, and all of my system files, drivers, and utilities
(including Qemm's Optimize, which works fine this way) would be kept on my C:
drive, and my C: would no longer be swapped with another drive letter.
The only drawback is that all your programs on your stacked drive,
which is now D: (or whatever), need to be reconfigured so they know they're no
longer on C:. Of course, dos 6 and stac 3.1 now now avoid the whole thing
altogether.
I can't be held responsible if someone tries this and their system
crashes and burns <g>, but it worked for me for over a year. I have a new
system with plenty of space (so far) so I don't have stacker installed anymore.
But remember kiddies, backup, backup, backup….
David
David,
What benefits does stacker 3.1 have over 3.0 (I have 3.0). I think you
mentioned that it does something like doublespace on bootup. Does it patch the
boot sector to load it's own config manager?
Bailey