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From: jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: de-fragmenting with Zoo
Message-ID: <269a1ed9.4023@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 10 Jul 90 18:30:49 GMT
References: <14236@venera.isi.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Cal Poly State Univ,CSC Dept,San Luis Obispo,CA 93407
Lines: 36



In an article sondeen@isi.edu (Jeff Sondeen) wrote:
>This request concerns the relative merit of using defragmenting
>programs compared to just restoring from ZOO or PKZIP backups.  That
>is, given that the defragment program recommends you first do a backup
>(and believe me this is handly as REFORMAT15 chewed up my Dos 3.3
>32Meg C: files), why not just del *.* after the ZOO/PKZIP save (having
>saved with directories stored) and then restore from the save -- eg:
>c:
>zoo a d:allfiles *.*
>del *.*
>zoo x// d:allfiles
>I've done this and it seems to have defragmented the files, in less than
>the 30 minutes claimed for REFORMAT to run on 32 Megs.   Thanks, /jeff

There is nothing really *wrong* with doing it this way.  It does defragment
your files.  But it seems inconvenient to me.  That may be because I have
an 80-meg disk with about 60 megs of files.

Here are the things that come to mind:
 - using zip or zoo to do your backups seems slower and less reliable
	than Fastback Plus or one of its competitors
 - you have to stick the diskettes in twice, once to do the backup,
	and once to restore.  With a defragmenter, you can just let it run.
 - during the time that your files are del *.*'d from your hard disk,
	you have one less copy in existence, and run the risk that your backup
	may be bad.
 - I don't know about REFORMAT, but Norton Speed Disk puts your directories
	on your hard disk in an order that improves disk access times over what
	you would get by restoring them from backups.

-- 
John Dudeck                                 "I always ask them, How well do
jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu                            you want it tested?"
ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549                               -- D. Stearns