Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!cmcl2!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!ethz!forty2!poole From: poole@forty2.UUCP (Simon Poole) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Hard Disk Crash Summary: RTFM Keywords: DL II, ReOrg Message-ID: <441@forty2.UUCP> Date: 18 Aug 88 21:30:32 GMT References: <5037@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Reply-To: poole@forty2.UUCP (Simon Poole) Organization: Exp. Physics University Zuerich Lines: 95 In article <5037@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> landay@cory.Berkeley.EDU (James A. Landay) writes: >This evening I was trying to speed up my hard drive by unfragmenting it. >I used Simon Poole's REGORG (v. .04) First I did partition C. No Problem >(I had FOLDER999.PRG in case of 40 folder problems) I then rebooted. >Did partition D. After 10 mins. or so, strange things started to happen. >The amount done indicator reached the end of the space for it and kept >going. Went past the end of the dialog box. Kept going. To the edge of >the screen. CRASSSSSSSSSSSSH!!!!!!!!! BOMBSSSSSSSSS!!! > >Rebooted! Partition D was fried!!! Luckily I had backed up with Turtle >the night before (great program George!) I used the BMS utility to ...... >Is there a new (safe) version of REORG? First a comment on the specific problem: (skip this part if you are not interested in this, more about the status of DL II after it) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the relevant part from the (never finished) DL II Manual: - Appendix A: ReOrg, a disk reorganizer - -IMPORTANT: REORG IS NOT A STANDALONE PROGRAM! YOU NEED AT LEAST A -IMAGE BACKUP PROGRAM AND A DISKCHECK PROGRAM BEFORE YOU CAN USE -IT! - -IMPORTANT: ALWAYS, ALWAYS MAKE AN IMAGE BACKUP OF YOUR DISK -BEFORE RUNNING REORG ON IT! - -ReOrg improves disk performance on harddisk and floppys through -better placement of subdirectories and files on disk and through -defragmentation of the files themselves, it will also remove -deleted and zero length entries. - -As the actual reorganizing is NOT an incremental process, during -the time from the start of the reorganization to the end of it, -your disk is in a unusable condition (at least from the viewpoint -of the operating system). This means, that a power failure, -computer malfunction, disk error or program failure during the -reorganization will leave you with a corrupted disk! - -To run ReOrg: backup your disk, run the diskcheck program on it -(DL II will work ok) and ONLY run ReOrg after all crosslinked -and lost clusters have been disposed of! ReOrg has NO protection -against incorrect disks and will probably run into a infinite -loop if you do not take these precautions! - -After you have run ReOrg and reorganized your disk, the computer -will reboot, this is normal and serves the purpose of -reinitializing the TOS internal directory tree. [A file by file backup will do, it's just not as quick] There is per definition no 'safe' version of this kind of program. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Second Part: Now and then people ask me about updates to two programs (DLII and ReOrg) I wrote in 86/87 and had in Beta test for a few months. The versions were never released officialy in any way to the public (I did allow a bit wider distribution in one case), and if people would actually read copyright notices, it probably wouldn't have gone unnoticed that there is no mention of free copying etc...... I more or less decided a few months ago never to distribute these programs in an enhanced and bug-fixed form (something my personal versions are). At the time I had two options: - produce a very much enhanced version as a commercial product: I decided not to do this, as it would have ment another 6 Months or so of extra developement and programming (6 months being optimistic), with rather unsure financial rewards (not to mention that working on a project also means an initial investment (you still have to live on something) of $$$$$$ which I don't have). - distribute it under the same terms as UniTerm: which would have ment: - finishing the manual (~1 months work) (this naturally also translates into $$$$$) - support ~1h/day for the next two years (extrapolation from time I spend on UniTerm plus questions about the beta test version of DL II (you would all be suprised how many buggy ramdisks are out there.....)) - near zero income As neither of there possibilities are really viable, I just decided to to NOTHING. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- UUCP: ...mcvax!cernvax!forty2!poole Simon Poole BITNET: K538915@CZHRZU1A ----------------------------------------------------------------------------