Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!plav
From: plav@cup.portal.com (Rick M Plavnicky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: B.A.D on HD
Message-ID: <40627@cup.portal.com>
Date: 28 Mar 91 02:17:46 GMT
References: <447@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 51

muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au (Murray Chapman) writes:

> I recently tried to run B.A.D. (version 3.15, I beleive) on my 20Mb
> hard drive.  It took about an hour, after which the drive would not
> validate, and any attemp o write on it caused a guru.....
> 
> Has anyone out there got B.A.D to work on a HD??? What other disk
> optimizers ar ut there for HD's???

As it happens, the other night I received my B.A.D. upgrade from v3.11
to v4.13.  I tried it on my hard drive (er, _after_ making a full
backup and testing B.A.D. with a few floppies), and it worked just
fine. 

While I didn't time it's operation, it didn't seem to take more than
30-40 minutes to do the job on my 3/4 full, 40 meg Quantum.  The
earlier revision worked for me, too, but it seemed to take much
longer.  (Memory's a bit foggy there; it's been many months since I
last used v3.11.)

I recall there being some reported problems with v3.11 working
properly with partition sizes of an odd number of blocks.  My single
partition was (and is) even-sized, so that was never an issue with my
setup.  According to the author, the partition size problem has been
corrected with the latest revision. 

The debate over B.A.D.'s goodness (ugh!) seems to rear its head here
every so often.  Many (most?) seem to feel that it does more harm than
good.  Maybe I'm just lucky; it's never trashed a disk (hard or
floppy) on me.  Now, being a paranoid soul, I'm religious with backups
before even _thinking_ of turning utilities like these loose on my
data.  But everyone do that?

Specifics, humble as they may be: A2000HD, rev 6.2, 68010, 5M RAM,
stock A2091/Quantum P40S with a single partition, B.A.D. v3.11/v4.13.
No problems. 

WRT other defragmentation tools, everyone's talking about Quarterback
Tools now.  I haven't tried it, but if it's as good as Quarterback
itself, then I'm sure it's fine. 

Owners of early-rev B.A.D. software should contact M.V. Micro about
upgrading, 303-467-1718.

No, I don't have anything to do with M.V. Micro other than being a
customer.


>				Murray Chapman

/* Rick Plavnicky ...!sun!cup.portal.com!plav  -or-  plav@cup.portal.com */