Disclaimer of all Warranties and Liability ------------------------------------------ M.V.Micro makes no warranties either expressed or implied, with respect to the software contained on this disk, its quality, performance, merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. This software is licensed "as is". The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the software is with the buyer. In no event will M.V.Micro be liable for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect in the software even if they have been advised of the possibility of such damages. Backups and Duplicates ---------------------- M.V.Micro grants to the purchaser of this product the right to make duplicates for personal backup only. The purchaser does not have the right to distribute these duplicates, regardless of whether or not a fee is charged for such distribution. This disk is not copy protected, and may be installed on a hard disk at will. However, installation on multiple CPUs is specifically prohibited. Reasonable corporate site licenses are available. Take note that every copy of B.A.D is serialized, this serial number is encrypted into the B.A.D program. This number can be used to trace an illegal copy of B.A.D back to it's source. Remember, a program worth using, is worth BUYING. Commercial Use -------------- Use of B.A.D for commercial purposes and/or on any distributable disk is strictly forbidden unless the following conditions have been met. You must state on the disk physically and/or magnetically that this disk was optimized by B.A.D to improve disk performance. This statement must be readily available to the end user. You must notify M.V.Micro of your intent in writing. Notice ------ M.V.Micro reserves the right to make improvements to the software contained on this disk at any time and without notice. Introduction ------------ Congratulations! You have purchased one of the most advanced disk utilities available for the Amiga. B.A.D is designed to greatly improve the performance of your disks, whether they be floppy disks or harddrives. B.A.D is so easy to operate that you could stop reading right now and never return, however we suggest that you keep this manual handy just in case the unexpected happens and you need additional information. Those of you who are naturally inquisitive or technically inclined may enjoy reading the manual in its entirety. Please take the time now to fill out the Warranty Registration Card and mail it back to M.V.Micro. This entitles you to upgrades at a very reasonable charge, customer service, and technical assistance. Terminology and Conventions --------------------------- Throughout this manual certain words will be used to describe specific actions or objects. Listed below are all words and phrases that have special meaning. Actions ------- Point - Position the mouse pointer over a screen object. Click - Point at object then press the left mouse button once. Select - Point at object then press the left mouse button twice in rapid succession. Objects ------- Gadget - Embossed button identified by red text. Getting Started --------------- Boot your Amiga to the Workbench in the normal fashion, if you have trouble please consult your Amiga users guide. Now insert your B.A.D disk into any floppy drive. When your B.A.D disk appears on the Workbench select it, a small window will open. Select B.A.D, once the program has loaded, you will be greeted by the B.A.D screen. Screen Layout ------------- In the upper left hand corner there is a small square gadget, this is the Close Gadget. Clicking on this gadget while B.A.D is idle will cause B.A.D to exit. During processing this gadget has no effect. To the right of the close gadget on the other side of the screen is the Screen To Back Gadget. Clicking on this gadget will cause the B.A.D screen to move behind any other screens that are currently being displayed. The screen which is directly behind the B.A.D screen will now be visible. You may return to the B.A.D screen at any time by shuffling through your screens until the B.A.D screen is once again visible. The upper portion of the screen contains a recessed control panel. In this panel are five gadgets which control B.A.D, and various displays to inform you of B.A.D's progress during processing. The five gadgets are identified by red text which describes their current setting. Displayed on the right side of the panel are Elapsed Time, Estimated Time of Completion, and a gas gauge that shows the current percent of completion. Clicking on the Mode Gadget will bring up the Mode Requestor. This enables you to tell B.A.D what process it should perform on your disk. The various modes are described later in this document. Clicking on either the Source, Destination, or Virtual gadget will bring up the Drive Requestor. This allows you to select which drives will be used during the process. The Source drive specifies where the data you wish to process is located. The Destination drive specifies where the processed data will be written for floppy drives only. The Virtual drive specifies which drive should be used for virtual memory caching when processing vary large drives or partitions. Clicking on the Start gadget will begin the process you have specified. Below the control panel is a large empty area, this is used for the grid display while processing. At the very bottom of the screen is a long box that is used to display the grid legend. Mode Requestor -------------- The Mode Requestor allows you to tell B.A.D how you want your disks processed. Also available from the mode requestor is information on your version of B.A.D. To exit click on one of the mode gadgets. W.B. MODE (Workbench) ---------------------- Workbench mode is the default mode selected when you first run B.A.D. When processed in this mode, the entire disk, including all directories, files, and data will be processed with special preference given to all files ending with the .info extension- i.e. icon files. In this mode all WorkBench operations will be dramatically sped up. Windows will open very fast, icons will seemingly blaze onto the screen, and performance will generally rival speeds found only on hard drives. Disk thrashing when opening windows will be non-existent! This mode is designed for those disks that generally are used with WorkBench. Note that if during the processing of a disk B.A.D. encounters any directories that do not have any icons, that directory will be processed in the CLI mode, regardless of the selected mode setting. CLI MODE -------- CLI Mode offers advantages over Workbench mode only if the disk to be processed will never be accessed by Workbench. Once again, the entire disk including all directories, files, and data will be processed, with special attention given to keeping CLI access quite fast. CLI users will appreciate this mode, as issuing the 'Dir', 'List', etc. commands will present very fast output, with no 'disk-thrashing' whatsoever. WorkBench operations will perform about the same as a non-processed disk. Once again,you should see CLI performance quite close to that of a hard drive. Test MODE --------- Test Mode is always called before actually starting to move data round on the disk. However it is provided as a separate mode to allow you to test the directory structure of your disk with out actually processing it. When a problem is found on a disk, B.A.D will open a window and inform you of what the problem is and which blocks are involved. Clicking anywhere in this window will cause the window to close. B.A.D will then abort the current process without causing any additional harm to your disk. You may use the information provided in the error message to correct the problem with a 'Sector Editor' program. Drive Requestor (Source, Destination, Virtual) --------------- Clicking on any one of the three drive selector gadgets will open the drive requester. The drive requester functions similarly during selection of the Source, Destination, or Virtual drive. The drive requestor displays a gadget for every valid drive B.A.D could find in your system. Your drives are split into two types, Flop, and Hard. (if applicable.) If you have any ram-based drives (other than the standard RAM: device) installed on your system, they too will appear in one of the two lists. Any ram based devices that are configured similar to a floppy drive will appear in the Flop list, while all others will appear in the Hard list. NOTE: B.A.D. will purposefully mask out the RAM: device, as well as any device starting with the letters 'VD', i.e. VD0: or VDK. This is because these are not devices in the true sense of the word, but rather handlers. Processing of these devices serves no useful function. You may toggle between the Flop or Hard lists by clicking on the Flop/Hard gadget located in the lower right corner of the requestor. This gadget will have no effect if you have no hard drives or ram based drives mounted on your system. The currently selected drive in each list will appear depressed. When you are done making your selection click on the 'OK' gadget. After clicking on the 'OK' gadget, the drive requestor will close and the gadget you initially selected (Source, Destination, or Virtual) will reflect the device you have chosen. Source Gadget ------------- This gadget displays the currently selected source drive. Clicking on this gadget opens the drive requestor allowing you to change the source drive as described above. The source drive is the drive B.A.D. will read from when processing. This can be any valid drive on your system. If the current drive selected is NOT in the Floppy list, the Dest. gadget will be disabled. This means the source drive will be processed in place, in what is called the 'Single Drive' mode. The source drive must contain a non write-protected disk before starting. Dest. Gadget ------------ This gadget displays the currently selected destination drive. licking on this gadget opens the drive requestor allowing you to change the destination drive as described above. The destination drive is the drive B.A.D. will write to when processing. This gadget is enabled ONLY when the currently selected source drive happens to be a floppy drive. When the Dest. Gadget is enabled, this means B.A.D. will process the source drive in what is called the 'Two Drive' mode, and all data read from the source drive will be processed and written to the destination drive. Virtual Gadget -------------- This gadget displays the currently selected virtual drive. Clicking n this gadget opens the drive requestor allowing you to change the virtual drive as described above. The virtual drive has very special meaning. Usually you will not have to worry about this particular setting, as it is only used when processing large hard drives or partitions. The virtual drive will ONLY be used when B.A.D. attempts to process a large hard drive or partition. Processing these large drives can consume a fairly large amount of memory, memory which you may not have available on your system. If this situation should arise, B.A.D. will open a window informing you it cannot locate enough ram to process your drive, and needs to use some empty space on the virtual drive for temporary storage. The drive specified by this gadget will be used for that temporary storage. A more thorough discussion of how virtual memory is used follows the section on hard drive processing. Start Gadget ------------ This gadget will begin the processing of your selected drive, according to the parameters you have selected. Floppy Processing ----------------- To process floppy disks, first select the desired MODE as described above. Most users will want to process floppy disks in the W.B. mode if the disk contains many icons. If the disk contains mostly data files and no icons, CLI mode will be the better mode to choose. The next step is to select the drive to use as the SOURCE drive. This is the drive where you will place the disk you wished to be processed. Click on the SOURCE gadget to change the desired source drive. Next, select the DESTINATION drive. If you have more than one floppy drive, it is best to select a drive that is different than your source drive. This allows B.A.D. to read the data from the SOURCE drive, process it in memory, and write out the data to a disk in the DESTINATION drive. This works much like doing a diskcopy, however the resultant disk is much faster in terms of access times and operation. For those who have only one drive, you may still process your floppies. Simply select DF0: as both your Source and Destination drive. B.A.D. will process the disk IN PLACE, thus you should make a copy of it in case something goes haywire while processing it. This method of processing takes longer, as there is no destination disk to write to. Expect processing times of around 30-45 minutes for a full disk, with faster times for disks not yet filled. Once you have set these parameters, simply insert the disks into the drives, and click on the START gadget. B.A.D. will proceed to process the disk according to your setup parameters. Expect processing times of 2-5 minutes depending on how full the disk is. When completed, you will have an copy of your original disk in the destination drive, identical in every way except for it's speed and smoothness. After processing, you should open all windows on the processed disk the first time with the write-protect set in the write ENABLE mode so that WorkBench may re-write it's updated .info files. After this is done the disk may then be write protected. Failure to perform this step will not take advantage of the full speed your new disk can function at. Hard Drive Processing --------------------- To process your hard drives, select the SOURCE drive (or partition) as descibed above. All hard drives are processed in single drive mode, thus the DESTINATION drive gadget will be disabled. Select the desired mode, as explained above, and you are ready to go. Click on the START gadget and B.A.D. will proceed to process the drive according to the parameters you selected. Note that you will NOT be able to access this partition or drive while it is being processed. Processing times are difficult to predict, but expect a standard 65ms drive to take 30-45 minutes for every 10 megs that you are using on the drive. This is a dramatic improvement over the first releases of B.A.D., which took 1-2 hours to process the same amount. When completed, AmigaDos will automatically load in the disk-validator to re-validate the drive. Please note that this validation may take up to 15 minutes for some drives, so allow the validator to finish before you try to access the drive at all. The results of processing hard drives are most pleasing. You will find the drive to operate much faster in all areas, while head thrashing will now be nearly eliminated. Not only will seeks be reduced, but you will actually reduce wear and tear on your drive as it does not have to jump all over the place to find what it needs. Access speeds will now rival that of a RAM DISK!! This is especially true of WorkBench operations. You will find that when opening WorkBench windows, the drive light will only blip a few times- thus the drive is feeding DOS the information as fast as it will digest it. We feel that once you process your drive, you will never want to be without this added speed and smoothness. It can become quite addictive!! Virtual Memory -------------- All computers come equipped with memory, otherwise called RAM. The amount of ram installed on your Amiga can vary a great deal, from 512 Kilobytes to well over 8 Megabytes. ( 1 Kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, while 1 Megabyte equals 1024 Kilobytes.) To process any disk or drive, B.A.D. requires a certain amount of memory to store important information about the drive. In particular, hard drives can require rather large amounts of ram to process. The larger the drive capacity, the more memory B.A.D. will require to complete processing of that drive. Some people may have very large drives, yet only 512 Kilobytes of ram, while others may have relatively small hard drives and a large amount of ram. If you process a large drive, but for some reason you do not have enough ram, B.A.D. will automatically detect this condition and request permission to use 'virtual memory'. Before processing ANY disk, B.A.D. will first calculate how much ram really is available. If necessary, B.A.D. will use most of the free ram on the system, leaving a default minimum amount for system use. A suggested figure to leave available for the system is shown in the requester that B.A.D. opens. You may modify this figure to suit your own anticipated needs, however sticking with the suggested amount is recommended. Simply type [RETURN] to use the suggested amount. Next, B.A.D. will then determine if the allowed memory usage will be enough to process the disk. If it is not, another requester will open informing you that virtual memory is needed. Virtual Memory is simply a technique where empty space on the drive you specify for virtual storage is used by B.A.D. This empty space is used much the same way regular ram is used, though access times for this storage will be much longer. This generally results in a longer processing times, epending on what percentage of the ram is actually virtual ram. Grid Display ------------ In the center of the B.A.D screen there is a large empty area when B.A.D is first loaded. This area is used for the 'Grid Display' uring processing. Immediately after the Start gadget is clicked B.A.D will reconfigure the sunken grid area to best represent the size of the Source drive. The legend information for the grid will be displayed at the very bottom of the screen. The legend will inform you of the total number of cells within the current grid, how many disk blocks are represented by each cell, and the total number of disk blocks on the source drive. Each grid cell represents a given number of disk blocks. Colors are used to represent the relative percentage of blocks within a cell that still need processing. Typically the grid will start out mostly red and gradually change to all light green. Each cell may be any one of six colors, these colors are: Blue - No blocks active, free disk space Red - 0 - 20% Orange - 21 - 40% Yellow - 41 - 60% Dark Green - 61 - 80% Light Green - 81 - 100% At the completion of the Test Mode the grid will be filled in with either all green or all red depending on which mode B.A.D is using, Single or Two drive modes respectively. This represent where the active data is located on the disk. If processing continues, and single drive mode is active the grid will be updated to represent what processing needs to be performed, after the preprocessing is complete. At this point the grid will be mostly red, B.A.D will then proceed with the task of rearranging all the data on the disk. As processing continues the grid will gradually change to all light green in color. At the completion of processing the grid will be light green and blue. The green areas represent active data on the disk and the blue areas are free disk space. Two drive mode uses a slightly different approach to display what is happening. Here the problem is displaying what is happening on two different disks using one grid. Our solution was to use a truth table to select which color a cell should be. Red - No processing completed Orange - Block read but not written Dark Green - Block written but not read Light Green - Block read and written What this means is that the grid will initially start out as all red. As blocks are read from the source drive there corresponding grid cell will change to either orange or light green. When the buffer is full B.A.D will begin to write the data out to the destination disk. The corresponding grid cells will change to either dark or light green. Then B.A.D has completed processing the grid cell colors represent the following: Blue - Free disk space on both disks Orange - Active data on Source, Free space on Destination Dark Green - Free space on Source, Active data on Destination Light Green - Active data on both Source and Destination disks