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From: rob@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Robert K Shull)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Silverlining and APS Drives (warning)
Keywords: Silverlining APS disk driver format
Message-ID: <1991Jun29.130759.8458@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
Date: 29 Jun 91 13:07:59 GMT
References: <1991Jun28.224201.20288@world.std.com>
Organization: Engineering Computer Network, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK
Lines: 55

In article <1991Jun28.224201.20288@world.std.com> barry@world.std.com (Barry L Wolman) writes:
>I recently purchased a Maxtor 210MB drive from Alliance Peripheral
>Systems (APS) for use as the internal drive in my new IIci.  Since I
>use Silverlining (5.25/10) on my other drives, I decided to discard
>the APS driver software.  I installed Silverlining (incidentally, this
>took two tries since it hung the Mac on the first attempt) and

Did you try to partition the drive immediately after installing the
Silverlining driver on you first attempt, or did you reboot? If you
didn't reboot, this could cause the hang since the APS driver is still
in memory.

>partitioned the drive into three 42MB and one 81MB+ partitions.  When
>I started copying files from an external 42MB partition to one of the
>internal 42MB partitions, I discovered that files on the new drive
>were bigger.  For example, a 1K file occupied 4K and a 19K file
>occupied 20K after copying.  It looked like all files were a multiple
>of 4K.  By the time I had copied about 20MB onto the new drive, the
>wastage was significant (about 3-4MB).

If I remember correctly, my APS drive came preformatted and partitioned
into a single 200+ MB partition. Silverlining sees this, and sets its
"valid size" range on the partitions you create so that they could be
expanded to fill the drive. On a 210 MB drive, this makes the allocation
size 4k. Reformatting clears this. I would think that initializing
would as well, but I don't remember, and don't want to experiment. :-)

>I fixed the problem by using Silverlining to reformat the drive, after
>which files didn't get bigger when copied.  This indicates a
>significant difference between the Silverlining formatting and the
>default formatting from APS.  When I called APS Technical Support
>(on this call and on an earlier call when I was installing the disk,
>I got to speak to a support person after only two rings!), they said
>it must be an incompatability between Silverlining and the APS driver.

Not really incompatibility, but a quirk of the way Silverling works.
It would probably do the same thing on any preformatted, partitioned
drive.

>Those of you who have used Silverlining (or other driver software) to
>take over a disk formatted by another package might want to check if
>you're experiencing the same problem.  Although using the original
>formatting looks possible, reformatting seems safer.

You can change the "valid size" range whenever you create a new
partition. The safest way I've seen to use Silverling to "take over"
a drive is to install the driver (if it lets me), reboot, and
re-initialize (not format) the drive.

>Barry

Robert
-- 
Robert K. Shull
rob@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu