Hello good folks;
I think I have come across an unmentioned insect inside the DOS 6x series
having to do with recalibrating the HD before every file access.
This causes the HD to sound like a machinegun when deleting a large number
of files or deleting directory chains. It also causes SEVERELY crippled
Hard disk performance that I thought in my case was due to the HD itself.
I've been wrong before, and I may be wrong here, but this is the evidence:
I have a test program that creates a lot (228) of files for HD/RD cache
and buffer performance tests. Whether the test means anything is quite
irrelevant here, because I'm only going to be complaining about the time
it takes to delete the files.
1) A P166 using Win 95 16 sec create/copy, 16 total = damn fast delete.
2) My '486 using DOS 3.30. 35 sec create/copy, 36 total = 1 sec delete
3) My '386 HP + DOS 3.30 95 sec create/copy, 97 total = 2 sec delete
4) Same HP using DOS 5.0 81 sec create/copy, 83 total = 2 sec delete
5) Same HP using DOS 6.21 81 sec create/copy, 86 total = 5 sec delete *
6) My P90 using DOS 6.2? 30 sec create/copy, 41 total = 11 sec delete ***
7) A 66Mhz'486 + DOS 6.22 65 sec create/copy, 86 total = 21 sec delete ****
8) Pete's 40Mhz'486 DOS 6.22 82 sec create/copy 90 total = 8 sec delete **
This last is to be confirmed.
Obviously all different disk drives. In my case, I tried BOTH PC-Cache
and Smartdrv, and while PC-Cache was a big winner, it didn't reduce the
time required to delete those files.
Looking for volunteers to conduct tests. You need 2Mb free disk space for
one or two minutes. Try the attached please.
- Clarence Verge
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SPEEDCHK.ZIP
