Re: Defrag for //gs

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Randy Shackelford writes ...
> 
> Nathan Mates (nathan@visi.com) wrote:
> 
> : >I am looking for a defrag program for the Apple //gs. I have Prosel, but
> : >it doesn't like the GsOs ProDOS partition.
> 
> :    ProSEL-16 is probably the best and safest defrag program; the 8-bit
> : version is probably slightly too old. There is no such thing as a
> : "GS/OS ProDOS partition"-- ProDOS remained relatively the same since
> : the 80s. [They did throw in some 'Resource Fork' hacks that broke
> : ProDOS 8, but as long as your ProSEL-16 is System 5.x or 6.x
> : compliant, there should be no problems.]
> 
> The last version of Beach Comber 32, either 3.7 or 3.07 (I forget which
> it was) could handle volumes with extended files. No earlier versions
> nor any version of plain Beach Comber or Beach Comber 20 could handle
> 'em. I used Beach Comber 32 until I got Prosel 16. It worked but was
> unholy slow. On the other hand it could optimize the boot volume without
> forcing a reboot afterwards.
> ...

     Okay; you are mainly concerned with defragging a hard disk.
However, a number of tests indicate that, for 800k diskettes, the best
way to defragment files is via file copy under the standard Finder--
i.e. you just copy all of the files to /RAM5 or another blank diskette
and, then, if you used /RAM5, Disk Copy the copy back to diskette. In
terms of speed gain, the results are much better than for diskettes
defragged under ProSel. I've never tried using Beach Comber 32.

     One interesting result of the tests with 800k diskettes is that the
file copy defragmented diskettes ended up with some small fragmentation;
yet, in terms of boot up and file access speed, they wiped out the "no
fragmented files" diskettes produced via ProSel. Basically, GS/OS +
ProDOS 'knows best' how to arrange files it is going to access.

     The above seems to imply that, if there is a place to put hard disk
files, the best way to defrag a hard disk partition may be to copy the
files under the Finder to, say, an empty Zip Disk partition. Once the HD
partition is erased, the files could be file-copied back.

     
 
Rubywand