Howard Schwartz wrote:
>
> > If you ever needed a little push to get you to install Arachne on a
> > ramdisk, here it comes:
>
> Later you say that putting arachne on a separate partition will not
> necessarily save files on other partitions. Why will a ramdisk be safer?
> Logically, a ramdisk is treated as another partition, i.e., another drive
> such as drive e:. Why would arachne not equally reach across the ramdisk
> to the hard disk partitions and wipe out files?
Well, it's a matter of distance. I suppose it's possible that Arachne might
reach from my HD to yours during some glitch in the matrix, but even you
will agree that THAT's unlikely. <G>
And it may NOT be Arachne that's doing the reaching, but she may set up
some conditions that trigger it. Like maybe thinking the XMS used by cache
belongs to her ?
Since we don't know what is going on, there are no guarantees that an RD
might afford protection, but it at least APPEARS that the filenames, paths,
and drive letters provide NO protection on a single HD because POSSIBLY
there is an error in the way the cluster number is interpreted - maybe a
drive re-calibration step is being missed, and the head movement is taken
relative, instead of absolute.
The HD, partitioned of not, is a SINGLE piece of hardware.
To reach from the RD to your HD would require an entirely different kind
of error. Some software somewhere would have to get confused about the
currently logged drive. Not impossible, of course.:(
I was impressed by what appeared to be a general localization of the damage
I had. Core.exe was not touched. In fact most of the original files were not
touched. It's as if only the most recent stuff was targeted. A lot of that
recent stuff was in Arachne main along with core.exe.
Telnet and SSHdos were both gone. My modified Insight was gone, as were all
my personal .ACFs. The original .ACFs were still there.
The file that was the subdir contained the location and length information
about both the new and old stuff. But it was the new stuff that disappeared.
Remember that I was working with a defragged and compacted drive, so
newly added stuff, including mail, would tend to be in a physical area
away from the old stuff. But, I THINK it would also have been a large
physical distance away from my "D" partition. :(
Possibly, a very SMALL hit on PART of the subdir file could account for it.
Maybe the cross-partition stuff is something else.
I admit I don't KNOW that any of the above describes the actual problem, but
can't think of any other scenario right now, and I welcome your suggestions.
- Clarence Verge
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