Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!uflorida!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!se-sd!huffman
From: huffman@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Bill Huffman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: Stacker questions?????
Message-ID: <4601@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 9 May 91 22:03:43 GMT
References: <20550003@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com>
Reply-To: huffman@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Bill Huffman)
Organization: NCR Corp., Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 47

In article <20550003@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com> vanmick@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com (Van Der Beek Michael-Leo) writes:
>	I am considering getting the stacker. It is a compression software and
>hardware which creates another partition so that it acts like another drive.
>It is supposed to double you disk space.
>
>	Any comments on it? I will be grateful for any information you can give.
>Is it very slow (software only, I have a 386-33Mhz)? I guess it will slow
>down disc access if you use the compress partition, how about the other 
>"normal" partitions, does it slow down too?
 
I have used it on a 286 and a 386.  There is some minor slow down.
It is more than acceptable to me.  You can get a HW board that is
supposed to make disk access even faster (than software only).  The
normal partitions aren't effected.  What Stacker does is to create a
normal file on your disk.  Then it loads a "disk driver" that
accesses the real file on disk, automatically compressing writes and
decompressing reads.

>	There is supposed to have a very good disk cache software incorporated,
>how does it compare to other software like hyperdisk, PC-cache and others?
>Hyperdisk can return memory space to windows can the stacker do the same. Also
>can I run hyperdisk (or any other disk cache) with stacker? 

The cache that comes with it is very rudimentary.  I  think it's
only 64K (or something).  The documentation suggests using another disk
cache, if available.  I use SMARTDRV.  I'm sure any would work.

>	When the compression is done, if you get a error sector, do you lose the
>entire partition or just several files (this is very important, I usually keep
>several copies of my important data in several directories (troublesome
>but safer), so a lost of a couple of files is tolerable but not the entire
>directory.)

never happened to me? So, I can't say for sure.  I would guess that
your other files would be okay.  You would even be able to use
Norton Utilities to try to fix it! (assuming Stacker was up).

>	Is there any know problems with other software (it is supposed to be
>pretty compatible with almost anything)?

I haven't found anything that didn't work.  I have lots of games at
home and lots of utilities at work. (PCTOOLS, XTREE Gold, Norton
Utilities, Windows 3.0, WordPerfect, Supercalc)  The only problem
you will likely run into is if the program accesses the disk
directly.  This is very uncommon these days.  The only type
exception I know of is the SWAPFILE option in windows 3.0.  The
SWAPFILE would have to reside on a "real" disk.