Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Floppy program loading is worst when switching back and forth between
    programs, forr example, between emacs to edit a scuplt 3d script file,
    and scuplt 3d.
    if you have say 2Mbyte ram, you can leave emacs and scuplt in memory
    and click on them from the ram disk.
    There may be room to just leave them both running, as well, but that
    may not work on combinations of programs that all acess the screen with
    many bit planes and use up chip ram.
    Tom

    
    Buy FACC II or Blitzdisk!  Either of these programs will cache disk
    accesses into memory.  I use FACC II even though I have a hard drive
    as it really does work well.  Blitzdisk I understand even works with
    hard drives, but I've been told doesn't work with the Hardframe
    controller I have.  I think FACC II only costs about $25 now (mail
    order).  (maybe less)
    
    The down side is that these programs can consume significant memory
    if you don't set them up properly.  FACC II from ASDG handles the
    memory pretty well IMHO.
    
    regards,
    
    steve

    
    The data transfer rate of Amiga floppy is a little over 15,000
    bytes/sec, which is about par with IBM and Mac and Atari systems.
    
    What makes Amiga floppys seem soooo slooooow is the amount of time it
    takes to fill a window with icons.  This is dueu to the bizzarre way in
    which AmigaDOS stores those little .info (icon) files on the disk. 
    Instead of being located on adjacent tracks, the icon files are
    scattered all over the disk.  When opening windows, the floppy heads
    must seek all over the disk to list the directory.
    
    There are two good ways to improve things... FastDisk and BAD are both
    programs that reformat the Amiga floppy in such a way that the .info
    files are located near each other.  The re-formatting is done in a
    completely compatible fashion.  FastDisk is shareware and is available
    on the net at either NORSE or TAPE.  BAD is a commercial product that
    also supports hard disks.
    
    Both of these utilities really work wonders.  Give FastDisk a try first
    (note:  two drives are needed).
    
    Version 1.4 of the system software will introduce the FastFileSystem to
    floppys, so help is on the way from Commodore.
    
    Ed.

     I agree with the recommendation for FACC and fastdisk. I have also
     used DiskOpti (Disk Optomizer) which I got from an AmigoTimes magazine
     disk. I am not sure if it is PD or not, but it works as well or better
     than FastDisk.
     Dave

    As far as BlitzDisk is concerned, version 2 supports two types of
    device drivers (ie. your floppies AND your hard disks) and FFS is now
    also supported.
    
    I and other Amigoids had BAD experiences with B.A.D. on hard disks.
    
    (Was the above statement a pun ,or what? ;-)   
    
    Regards,
    
    <CB>

Since I in the process of rebuilding my hard drives I tried a little test with
my system drive in an attempt to speed things up.  Ed A. indicated a few notes
back that the reason the floppys are sooo slooow is because the .info files are
scattered on the disk.  So after re-formatting my HD0: FFS partition I manually
copied files one at a time in an attempt to control where they were on the disk.
I used the following order:

			Disk.info
			all other .info files
			manually created all directories
			copied Startup-Sequence, StartupII into S:
			copied HDdisk into Expansion
			copied MountList into Devs
			copied C directory
			copied remaining directories

The results were astounding!  After clicking on the HD0: icon the window simply
flashed on the screen.  This use to take several seconds while the disk seeked
all over the place.  Now I can't even hear the disk.  I realise this is because
the .info files are all located together.  Too bad CBM didn't structure their
FFS to allow all .info files to be written together at the begining of each
directory on the disk.  Is there any way to pre-allocate some space on the disk
for .info files?  Would creating DummyDrawer.info files, writing them to the 
disk at the begining of the directory and later when needed, renaming them and 
create the associated directory work?  For example on SYS: if I was to write
in the following order:

			Disk.info
			DummyDrawer1.info
			DummyDrawer2.info
			       .
			       .
			       .
			DummyDrawerx.info
			System.info
			Utilities.info
			etc.

Perhaps I could change the ICON type to disk so the would not showup until I
need them.  Would this work?  Would IconMaster for example later allow me to
change the type to a drawer, preserving the position on the disk?  I hope to
try it this week using the LIST command to see the disk blocks.

Any other suggestions on how to improve the HD speed by arranging the files?
Can someone suggest the best order to write the files in?  To decrease boot
time what files are accessed during a boot?  This is not as important to me
as I boot my HD from floppy (KS 1.2), besides it's the BindDrivers command 
that really slows it up (disk validation I guess).

Thanx,

...Ed
			
			

DiskMechanic has a Tune-up option to select between WB and CLI. In 
WB mode it puts all the .info close together. I spent 3 hrs last nite
checking/tuning/rebuilding/reformatting/restoring... my hard drive.
As a tech i should have remembered those immortal words 'if it aint
broke don't f**k with it'. 

 mark

    
    If you don't want to use a commercial or PD/shareware disk optimizer,
    Commodore has provided one free with the 1.3 version of the 'copy'
    command.
    
    By simply typing 'COPY DF0: DF1: ALL' from the CLI or Shell, AmigaDOS
    will make a valiant attempt to format the destination disk in as
    efficient a way as possible.  I don't think it's a good as B.A.D. or
    FastDisk, but the price is right.  However, this method of
    copying/rearranging a disk is very slow.
    
    Ed.