Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!um-math!hyc
From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: To seek or not to seek.
Message-ID: <506@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 88 23:30:03 GMT
References: <806@yugas.UUCP> <7078@chinet.chi.il.us> <838@cacilj.UUCP>
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Reply-To: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
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In article <838@cacilj.UUCP> paul@cacilj.UUCP (Paul Close) writes:
>This brings up another question.  Do the faster seek rates REALLY help given
>the atari's reputedly poor file system?  After all, why blow more money than
>you need to on a fast disk?

*Yes!* If you get a drive with twice as fast a seek time as another drive,
you will definitely notice the speedup. I have a 28ms and 40 ms drive. The
28 ms drive is noticeably faster on everything. You can simply compare how
long the "inuse" LED stays lit when doing drive to drive file copies. After
all this time on a 40ms Supra 20 (Miniscribe 8425) I can't imagine trying
to work on a drive with a 60+ms access time. I'd go nuts waiting for programs
to compile and link.

I also use TurboDOS, to maximize the benefit of a fast drive...
--
  /
 /_ , ,_.                      Howard Chu
/ /(_/(__                University of Michigan
    /           Computing Center          College of LS&A
   '              Unix Project          Information Systems