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From: dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: NU Speed Disk
Message-ID: <1640043@hpspcoi.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Jan 90 03:24:28 GMT
References: <25a936f6:3975.1comp.sys.ibm.pc;1@vpnet.UUCP>
Organization: HP Lovecraft Division
Lines: 35

>Defrag your booting hard drive, and time your boot process, especially
>if you have quite a few of commands and such the get executed in your
>CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file.   Then switch to the other program, and
>defrag your disk, and time your boot process.
>
>I found that it took 27 seconds for boot with the use of PCTools compress
>and it took only 20 seconds for boot with the use of Norton Speed Disk
>as the hard drive compression method.

This does not strike me as a valid test. The boot programs are
uneffected by either compression programs. In addition the state of the
hard disk has to be EXACTLY THE SAME IN BOTH TESTS for the results to be
valid. Doing one first and then the other without first restoring the
hard disk EXACTLY would make the second test invalid.
For example, Norton relocates config.sys. PCTools will then find
config.sys in an entirely different location than Norton because Norton
moved it from its original location. Even if Norton and PCTools were
exactly alike in their relocation algorithm, PCTools will now give
a different result.

Assuming the tests were properly done, what is effected is the files
config.sys, autoexec.bat and the files referenced in those two files.
The location of those programs on the hard disk is what is effected.
If all the files are located in wide scattered places then the boot
up time will increase. For either program to avoid this problem
they would have to know that these files are used together and should
be placed together on the hard disk to minimize seeking. Neither
programs does this so the placement of the files is basically random.
This means that with a different fragmentation the Norton could just as well
give the longer boot time.

			   Danny Low
	        Sunnyvale Personal Computer Division
               dlow@hpspcoi   ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow 
		       HP4200/29 720-3622