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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!elroy!cit-vax!ucla-cs!wales
From: wales@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Hard Drive dir problem
Message-ID: <7083@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Wed, 8-Jul-87 16:02:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: shemp.7083
Posted: Wed Jul  8 16:02:08 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 14:05:17 EDT
References: <3774@garfield.UUCP>
Sender: root@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 33
Keywords: flashing lights

In article <3774@garfield.UUCP> robert4@garfield.UUCP writes:

    Whenever I (or a programme) access a directory for the first time
    after a cold boot (after loading dos and executing autoexec.bat,
    etc.) my hard drive access indicator light flashes rapidly and
    steadily for about 5-10 sec and then produces the results of the
    dir scan.

    This ONLY occurs the first time after I turn the system on OR when
    using a utility like PCTools (each time it checks the dir or a
    path).

    And this only seems to happen with DOS 3.2 (I was using 2.11 before
    this without the problem) and only on the hard drive.

I see something similar on my XT clone running DOS 3.1 when I do a DIR
on my 30-Mb disk.

The first time I do a DIR after a reboot, I get a list of the files and
the number of files.  The system then accesses the drive madly for a few
seconds before printing out the number of free bytes on the drive.

I assume what is happening is that the system needs to check the free
block info on the drive in order to tell how much free space there is.
After this has been done once, the data is stored somewhere in the sys-
tem, and presumably incrementally modified as files are created/deleted,
so that subsequent DIR operations don't need to compute the amount of
free space from scratch.

-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 213-825-5683
	3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
	wales@CS.UCLA.EDU   ...!(ucbvax,rutgers)!ucla-cs!wales
"Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder."