Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!portal!atari!apratt
From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: DISKFREE
Message-ID: <1002@atari.UUCP>
Date: 1 Mar 88 19:13:06 GMT
References: <705@yugas.UUCP>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 23

From article <705@yugas.UUCP>, by julius@yugas.UUCP (Julius OKLAMCAK):
> This is a short little program I found on a local BBS:
> 
> DiskFree V1.0 By Timothy Purves

I'm sure this works fine, and most of us know why Dfree is slow in the
current (old and MEGA) ROMs, and I've already sped this code up in the
new GEMDOS, but ...

If you start with a virgin hard disk, create a file on it, write 253K to
it, and then do Dfree, you will see that *no* space has been used -- the
253K is not counted against you.  This happens because until you close
the file, the FAT sector (which you've filled with the one chain for
this file) is still in a GEMDOS buffer, not on disk, and this utility
(necessarily) subverts the GEMDOS buffers. 

With that caveat aside, I'm sure this is a fine utility which people
should use to speed up the Dfree operation ("Show Info" from the desktop
when a disk drive icon is selected) until the new ROMs come out. 

============================================
Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt