Conference hydra::amiga_v1

2707.0. "Zoo THRASHES hard disk" by MSBIS1::LANDINGHAM (Guy M.,BXB1-1/F11,293-5297) Fri Jun 30 1989 11:23

I'm using Zoo (I believe it's version 2.00) to de-archive .zoo files on a
hard disk.  At one point, I noticed that when I invoked zoo (with either the
"v" or "x" parameter) the disk did about 30 seconds worth of seeking before
I saw any response (list of zoo file or extract message).  I ran B.A.D. on the
hard disk ("Come back tomorrow...") with the "CLI" option in an effort to
eliminate some fragmentation.  After this, zoo worked with a minimal amount
of seeking and was much faster.  However, after downloading a few more files
to that disk and later transferring them to floppies, the symtom seems to
be resurfacing.  Typically, the disk varies between 70 and 90% full when I'm
downloading files...

Does anyone have an idea as to what may be causing this?  I suspect that after
downloading, copying to floppy, and erasing files on the hard drive that it's
becoming re-fragmented and zoo's use of temporary disk space is causing the
drive to seek frantically.  I tried running zoo from RAM:, but no difference:
it seems to want to use the directory where the archive file is.  Anyone know
if I'm barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks, Gurus!

    
    What kinda HD? What kinda Zoo file (size, # of entries)?
        
    I don't have those symptons with my HD (RD 53 + A2090) and my version
    of Zoo (2.1) at home.
    
    One tiny side-note:
    My (experimental) and a friends practical (he bought it:-) )
    experiences with BAD (V3.?) lead to the clue that there are some
    braindead and buggy pieces of code in that program.
    The way it trashes around the HD (w/ lotsa RAM available) clearly
    marks a poor algorithm. 
    The thing crashed ocassionally on our A2620 equipped systems.
    I find the attitude towards CBM and AmigaDOS/FFS the author shows in 
    the documentation highly provocative and questionable.
    
    Regards,
    
    <CB>