Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!afit-ab!treid From: treid@afit-ab.arpa (Thomas F. Reid) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Disk fragmentation???? Message-ID: <242@afit-ab.arpa> Date: Tue, 27-Oct-87 11:26:40 EST Article-I.D.: afit-ab.242 Posted: Tue Oct 27 11:26:40 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 29-Oct-87 21:26:30 EST References: <6121@sunybcs.UUCP> Reply-To: treid@afit-ab.arpa (Thomas F. Reid) Organization: Air Force Institute of Technology; WPAFB, OH Lines: 61 Keywords: loading many programs at once... Summary: WAIT helps a lot! In article <6121@sunybcs.UUCP> ugmiker@sunybcs.UUCP (Michael (what am I wood???) Reilly) writes: > > When I boot up my machine I like to run a couple of dif- >ferent programs to make life easier(don't we all :-). I first >run shell, and then in my .login file I "run" facc,mouseclock, >blitzfonts, and "run" date > lastlogin to put my login time in a >file. . . . > Now, my question is: could my boot up time be shortened if >I waited for each process to be loaded and running before I try >to load the next one?? The disk drive makes ALOT of >brrrrrt...brrrrrt noises (good description huh?? :-), like it is >jumping back and forth between the programs it is simultaneously >trying to load. > Could it also be that one of the programs I am trying to >load are just fragmented throught the disk (which is 90% full), >and if it is, how could I better "order that program, would I >have to copy the disk, file by file to keep the programs whole??? I have a similar setup for my Startup-Sequence...RUNning programs from the Startup-Sequence. After a little experimentation, I've noticed that my startups go a lot faster (dropped from over 2 minutes to about 1 minute) using WAITs after each RUN (and after LOADWB ;-) I was also having "gronking" problems due to the disk validation cycle...a WAIT early in the Startup-Sequence did the trick. By the way, it works even better if you copy WAIT to RAM:, then use "RAM:WAIT ##" throughout the Startup-Sequence. The first few lines of my S-S look something like this: Copy SYS:C/Copy RAM: RAM:Copy SYS:C/wait RAM: RAM:wait 5 . . . RAM:run execute SYS:S/Time.bat <-- Does a timeset, then echo's to file RAM:wait 8 . . . The amount of time to wait varies. I've played around with it some, and 5 seconds (? it is in seconds, right ?) for mucking around with 1 (small) file on disk (as opposed to RAM:), and 8 seconds for two files (ie, the "execute" command comes off of disk, as well as "S:Time.bat") seem to work well for me. Times may vary for your machine, but those #'s should be good first guesses ;-) And yes, you MUST copy file-by-file ("COPY DF#: DF#:" ALL works well) to "unfragment" your disks. The drop from 2 min to 1 min also included a COPY...ALL in addition to the WAITs, but the WAITs seemed to have more effect than the COPY. TomR // \X/ ARPA: treid@afit-ab.arpa -- TomR // ARPANET: treid@afit-ab.arpa \X/