Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!hammen
From: hammen@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Robert J. Hammen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Comments on S.U.M. (long)
Keywords: Symantec, SUM, S.U.M.
Message-ID: <3986@csd4.csd.uwm.edu>
Date: 25 Aug 89 00:02:33 GMT
References: <11238@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Sender: news@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Reply-To: hammen@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Robert J. Hammen)
Organization: Bulfin Printers
Lines: 109

In article <11238@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes:
>
>I recently bought S.U.M. 1.1 from Symantec. 
>
>Major gripe #1:  Installation
>
>performed, but that's minor).  HOWEVER, when I tried to "Install 
>Guardian Volume Save," the program told me that I did not have 
>enough contiguous blocks.

Most of the problems this person had with the installation of SUM are due to
the fact that, for a good portion of its features (volume save + hard disk
partion), SUM requires contiguous (unfragmented) disk space. Well, you might
think that's no problem, since SUM includes the HD Tuneup optimizer, right?
Wrong. HD Tuneup is a FILE optimizer, and not a DISK optimizer. It attempts
to defragment files by moving them to a contiguous area of the disk, if 
possible. This can actually make the disk more fragmented, though. You need
to run a true DISK optimizer (such as DiskExpress) to actually move all of
the files into one contiguous area on the disk. IMHO, releasing SUM without
a true disk optimizer, even though it sometimes requires one to function, was
a serious error. One of the "new features" in SUM II is the disk optimizer...

>Total installation time, approximately 8 hours, 7 of which were spent
>shuffling files on and off floppies.

>When my new hard disk arrived, installation went smoothly.

Again, this is likely due to the fact that it's been a long time since you
last reformatted/initialized your HD20 (maybe years) and your disk was 
heavily fragmented. A disk with nothing on it isn't too badly fragmented :-)

>disk.  So I don't really know if Guardian works on the boot disk, the
>volume it is installed on, all mounted volumes, or just what. 

I agree that this should be documented better in the manual. A little
observation shows me that as a disk is dismounted, the Shield cursor comes
up for a time and the drive is accessed. At shut down time, you should notice
the program updating each drive (as long as you did the "Install Guardian 
Volume Save" for _each_ hard drive).

>I have not tried to use HD partition.  The manual tells all about
>which buttons to push; but I'm willing to bet that the disk has to be
>empty or nearly empty in order to create a partition.  Maybe not; the
>manual doesn't say.  From the chatter on the net I gather that S.U.M.
>creates some kind of "pseudo-partitions"--I don't know, but my new
>hard disk came with UniMac partitioning software, so I don't ever plan
>to try to use Symantec's HD partition.

You're correct here in that HD Partition needs contiguous space in order to
create its files. Each partition is actually an invisible file that's the size
of the partition. Personally, I don't use HD Partition, because the first
version was a bit flaky (I lost some files to it when a partition got trashed)
and I have to rename the INIT to "  HDPartition" to get it to load on my
configuration (or else it just beeps at me. Real helpful, Symantec). There are
a number of other things about SUM that seem a bit sloppy - there were (and
maybe still are) bugs with the process of copying the volume save file to a
floppy when a previous volume save is there - and things like the SUM 1.11 #2
disk crashing my Mac II every time it was inserted (even on an INITless
system)_ until I unlocked the master disk (something I NEVER do) and rebuilt
the desktop file.

>The manual makes a big deal about always accessing the programs via 
>Disk Clinic.  In italics:  "You should not launch a program directly from 
>the desktop unless you understand disk structures and the symptoms 
>of disk problems." 

Disk Clinic is really a shell for all of the other programs that allows fairly
novice users to pass configuration parameters to the other programs. If you  
can figure out how to launch HFS Recover, select source and destination disks,
load a device driver, then you don't need Disk Clinic (personally, I do still
use it because I find it a quick, step-by-step way to specify all of those
parameters in advance.

>The Signature Files include files for Word 1.0 and Word 3.0; however, 
>I am using Word 4.0.  Perhaps the Signature File for Word 3.0 will also 
>work for 4.0?

I'd like to point out that SUM 1.1 shipped a few months in advance of
Word 4.0, so I don't hold this against Symantec. I also believe that Word 4
uses the same type & creator as Word 3 (gnash! snarl!), so it should still
work, though I can't verify it now.

>Guardian may be a technically sound program; you will probably find it
>satisfactory if (1) you have only one hard disk, (2) you have lots of
>room on the disk, and (3) you don't mind not knowing what it does.

What do you mean by "not knowing what it does?" Guardian, rather simply,
will keep its own record of your hard disk's directory should it get 
damaged (assuming you've activated the volume save). If you turn on the
file save option, it will keep a record of deleted files in a seperate,
invisible file. 

>don't plan ever to use it again.  Someday I'll probably buy Disk
>Express instead.

Or get the SUM II upgrade (hopefully for free, in your case). BTW, there is a
new version of DiskExpress coming out, DiskExpress II (geez, where are all of
these Roman numerals coming from?). The way their ads describe it, it sounds
like an INIT ("always optimizing your drive when your Mac is inactive" or 
somesuch. I called Alsoft today: the upgrade is $28, the list is $89.95, but if
you buy it now for $69.95 list (MacConnection is cheaper), you'll get the 
upgrade for free...

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