Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Thomas_E_Zerucha From: Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: To seek or not to seek. Message-ID: <12297@cup.portal.com> Date: 8 Dec 88 03:23:21 GMT References: <806@yugas.UUCP> <7078@chinet.chi.il.us> <838@cacilj.UUCP> Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 13 I wouldn't call the Atari's filing system "slow" if you ever dealt with a normal PC (4.77Mhz XT w/ standard Disk Controller), or with an Amiga (the ones I have access to have v. 1.2 of the os, and 1.3 is supposed to be faster). It has problems with the FAT, so get fatspeed or turbodos if you can't wait for TOS 1.4. Not that the others are slow, just that the ST isn't slower unless you have a disk which is both big and full, and if you have the Spectre you will not want anything less than a Mac 2. But to the question - does a faster drive make a difference? YES!!!. Of course you won't notice it if you read files in small pieces, or if your memory is very full, so you can't buffer floppy I/O. But when reading contiguo blocks or if there is a lot of seeking you will notice a difference. Wether it is worth it is another matter. Generally more space will do more good than a faster mechanism, and RLL will be faster than MFM.