HARD DRIVE HINTS    by Leigh Murray 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 INTRODUCTION Bargains Galore In the current Amiga climate, there are some real computing bargains to be found, both new and second-hand. And some of the very best bargains include hard drives, which are coming down in price all the time. I hope that this article will encourage those of you not yet blessed with a hard drive to think seriously about buying one, or even getting a used Amiga that is already fitted with a hard drive. Hard Drive = BLISS! About three years ago, I bought a GVP A500-HD+ Impact Series II hard drive fitted with a 105 MB Quantum hard drive and 2 MB RAM. It has been amongst my all-time great purchases. Quoting Back Before I bought the hard disk, I thought (and said, so it's been quoted back at me!) that what I needed most of all was more RAM; the hard disk was an expensive bonus that I thought would be merely a nicety (a bit faster and easier to use than a floppy drive) and a convenient way to get the extra RAM. I was wrong. Soaring Whilst Grounded My level of enjoyment in using my Amiga 500 soared, absolutely SOARED, after getting the hard disk. And it was the hard disk part of the set-up, not the extra Fast RAM that made the difference. With this heavenly hard drive, no longer were there frequent long waits `enlivened' by the grinding noises of the floppy drive whilst loading files from disk. I could have huge numbers of files catalogued on one convenient hard drive, and just zip from one program to another, from one file to the next. The More The Merrier I was so taken with the ease of use of the Amiga 500 set up, that when I decided to get an Amiga 2000 as well, I didn't even contemplate getting one without a hard drive. The Amiga 2000 I bought came equipped with a 2091 card fitted with a 50 MB Quantum hard drive and 2 MB RAM; this was quite a powerful machine, at a very reasonable price. I later added a second (bigger) hard drive to this combo. So you can see that I dote on hard drives. The same principles hold whatever the hard drive (they are all TERRIFIC accessories), but I'll confine specific comments to the GVP, my first love. BENEFITS OF A HARD DRIVE What You Gain from a Hard Drive Speed Programs and files can be loaded MUCH more quickly than from floppy disk. Apart from the much faster read/write speeds of a hard disk compared to a floppy, you don't have to riffle through disk boxes looking for one particular floppy disk, and load it into a drive (first removing the disk that is already there, and stowing that one away); you don't even have to write sticky labels for a hard disk. Ease It is much easier to find files on a hard drive than on multiple floppy disks. All the files are in one physical location. This is a huge benefit for me because I find it remarkably easy to mislay anything, including floppy disks. Also, if you're not terrific at housekeeping, hard drives have a huge advantage over floppy disks - they are nicely enclosed, well away from the dust that loves to settle on any floppy disk left lying about. (Of course, ideally, all computer gear should be kept in a dust-free environment; there's no hope of that at my place!) More Multitasking Multitasking is easier with a hard drive, because the number of different programs running at once is not constrained by the number of floppy drives available. Who Should Buy a Hard Drive If you only use your Amiga to play games (which would, I think, be rare amongst MegaDisc readers), then you may not see much benefit from getting a hard drive because many Amiga games are still not HD-installable. But if you use your Amiga for productive work, even a little, then you are likely to see a massive improvement from getting a hard drive, and, like me, you will probably find yourself doing more and more with your Amiga because it has become so much easier to use. POINTS TO CONSIDER WHEN PURCHASING A HARD DRIVE . Capacity . Reliability . Fan noise . Appearance (if that is important to you) . Price Speed is Not Number One Although there have been speed tests done on the various hard disks available, and some end up rated as fast (the GVP, for instance), and some as slow (the Commodore A590), I don't think speed is the most important element of hard drive performance. I favour capacity and reliability ahead of speed. This is because all hard drives are so much faster than a floppy disk that their relative speeds seem relatively irrelevant! (The difference between one and two blinks is not important - it's the difference between a couple of blinks and a long snooze that counts.) Go For Capacity and Reliability Capacity needed can be assessed roughly by working out what programs and files you might wish to store on the hard drive (and remember that easy access to files stored on hard disk is a huge bonus) and then adding up how many floppy disks that comes to. Each floppy stores a bit less than a megabyte, so, as a rule of thumb, the number of megabytes of hard disk capacity you need is the number of floppies worth of programs and data you wish to store. Be sure to buy a drive with more capacity than you think you need now, as your needs are likely to expand as your interests develop. (Add up what you think you need, then double that figure to get closer to what would be really useful....) Reliability can only be judged by reading reviews, asking opinions etc. And appearance and price are best assessed by seeing the actual drives and comparing prices (ads in magazines such as ACAR could give you a feel for the best prices). Before purchasing a hard drive, always check out how much fan noise there is with your chosen drive; I know of some people who didn't use their hard drives simply because of the almost intolerable racket made by the fan. The A590 has a particularly poor reputation in this regard. SIZE OF HARD DRIVE Think Big You should buy as big a hard drive as you can possibly afford. It is amazingly easy to fill the things. But even the littlest size (20 MB) is worth buying if you can't run to a big one - it just means you will have to be a very diligent pruner.... What I Store on my Hard Drive To give you an idea of what you might wish to store on a hard disk, below is a list of the major non-system directories (drawers) on my GVP hard disk, the rough sizes of each, and the sorts of files stored in them. ART 6 MB Programs (DeluxePhotoLab, DeluxePaint, icon-editing programs), clip art, pictures I include in letters, copies of icons. This directory had much more in the past - I've moved a lot to the A2000. CODING 15 MB Basic and some Basic programs, SAS-C. DATABASES 3 MB HyperBook, sample databases, test databases. EDUCATION 1 MB Distant Suns, World Atlas. GAMES 6 MB TAD.Tiles, Shanghai, China Challenge (all Mah-Jongg derivatives), Tetrix and WellTrix, a few Infocoms, Jigsaws etc. Basically, simple strategy games suitable for a quick game or two as an intellectual `coffee break' between bouts of steady brain-straining work. MEGADISC 5 MB Recent MegaDiscs, plus the MD.Articles and Reviews databases. PD 7 MB Listing of Fish disks 1-1000, lists of other PD owned and wanted. UTILITIES 12 MB Quarterback, SID, all the GVP utils, many PD utilities (such as PicSaver, Snap, AutoCLI, SysInfo) plus PD programs under evaluation. WRITING 9 MB Word/text processors (Final Copy, Pen Pal, QED), copies of some letters, articles under development for MegaDisc. Other Top-level Directories 8 MB c, s, libs, devs, fonts, system, prefs etc OPTIONAL EXTRAS Extra Fast RAM When buying a hard drive, it is common to get some extra fast RAM at the same time because it is so easily fitted. The important thing to consider here is the difference between chip RAM and fast RAM, and to try to determine whether you need to upgrade chip RAM, fast RAM or both. If you are short of chip RAM, then upgrading fast RAM won't help. Chip RAM vs Fast RAM Originally, my Amiga 500 - like most people's - had only 512K of chip RAM. (There are many programs available in the public domain which you can use to find out what specific hardware you've got; SysInfo, on Fish 969 and earlier Fish disks, is one such program.) Chip RAM is called this because it is RAM accessed by the Amiga's custom chips (as well as by the central processing unit). Chip RAM is used by programs for graphics displays, so the more windows you have open at any one time, the more chip RAM you need. (If you are running short of chip RAM at any time, try closing a few windows.) Fast RAM, on the other hand, is memory which is only accessible by the central processing unit; without any interaction with the custom chips, it's faster. Until I upgraded the chip RAM to 1 MB, I found that the extra fast RAM in the GVP could not be fully utilised because the number of programs that I could run at the same time was limited by the amount of chip RAM I had available for their screen displays. Now, with 1 MB chip RAM, I get better use from the additional fast RAM in the hard drive. Accelerators Accelerators are often combined with hard drives. A faster processor certainly makes Amiga computing even more enjoyable, but I think it comes a poor second to the benefits of a hard drive. Get an accelerator if you have money over after buying a hard drive and extra RAM, but not before. Unless you run a lot of processor-intensive applications (such as fractals or ray-tracing), the main gains from a faster processor will be: windows open faster, FullView displays files more quickly (particularly crunched files), applications start up more quickly, and program compiles takes less time. INSTALLATION Installing a GVP Hard Drive This was a fairly easy process, but the documentation supplied was not brilliant - it could best be described as adequate, and would not be ideal for inexperienced users. Find a Good Dealer For beginners in particular, I strongly recommend that you buy only from a supportive dealer. If you dont't have such a gem available locally, why not buy from MegaDisc? I'm sure Tim Strachan would be happy to help if you struck trouble figuring out how to install the new drive, and MegaDisc has an excellent reputation for fast, efficient and pleasant service. PARTITIONING People often mention partitioning. It seems to be the `in' thing in the hard drive world. For instance, in MD24 there were two reviews of the GVP for the A2000, and there was also an article on hard drive partitioning. I found it interesting that all three of the writers divided their hard drives into 4 Amiga partitions (and one also had another partition for IBM usage). Their reasons for this partitioning are spelt out in detail, and intending hard-drive buyers would probably find these articles of interest. I take the opposite approach: I don't partition. On the A500, all of my Amiga stuff sits on one BIG partition of 100 MB, with the address of dh0:. Points to consider when thinking about partitioning: . flexibility in storage allocation . backups - ease of backup and restore . speed of access . fragmentation . ease of organisation . ease in locating files . ease in recovering files deleted by accident Having only one partition per hard drive gives me more flexibility in use of storage. Sometimes I need more space for artwork (for instance, when I'm working on icons for MD or designing Christmas greeting cards), sometimes more for writing (when I'm developing articles, writing oodles of letters etc), sometimes more for evaluating software utilities, and sometimes I want to add extra applications. Many people like to put all their programs in one partition and their data files in another, and they seem very happy with this arrangement. I think I'd find it more difficult to keep such a regime well organised. And it would be tricky figuring out how much space I needed initially for each partition. With only one partition, no such estimates are necessary, and as long as there is room on the disk, I can add whole applications easily (perhaps by deleting a few data files first!). All applications and data can be clearly separated into functional groupings even within a single partition by storing them in logically-named drawers. This is the approach I take. Accidental Deletions If, however, you are prone to accidentally deleting files and often need to recover them, then multiple smaller partitions may suit you better than one big one. The reason for this is that the whole partition will have to be searched by the recovery program (such as DiskSalv2 - on START 7) to locate and recover the deleted file. And if you ever do delete something you meant to keep, DO NOT WRITE to that disk or partition until you recover the file. The file will still be there - only its directory entry is deleted and that's all that is irretrievable until the disk space the file occupies is overwritten by new files. BACKUPS The number one companion to any hard drive should be a good backup/restore program. I use Quarterback, many people swear by AmiBack, and there are several good PD utilities readily available (such as ABackup, which comes on MegaDisc's START 7, DiskStarter). I make sure I have a full backup of all essential files, and this backup is kept offsite. I also do incremental backups occasionally (that is, I do a Quarterback backup of files that have changed since the last backup). I also backup all work files to floppy frequently (as I just did, after typing that phrase!). Basically, whenever I make important changes, I copy the file immediately, or almost immediately, from hard drive to floppy disk. Before Format The most critical time to take a backup is just before a Format, which wipes the entire contents of the partition. If you intend to format a disk (which should be needed rarely if ever after the initial format), then it's safest to have two backups. GOOD COMPANIONS To make best use of a hard drive, a directory utility (such as SID2, Directory Opus or DirWork) is almost an essential. Once you get the hang of using these utilities, they make everyday housekeeping operations so much clearer and easier. I use SID2 all the time, and I love it. The Directory Utility Starter Disk, START 2, has versions of all three (plus tutorials) if you would like to sample them. Another good companion is FindIt (on START 7). I find this utility invaluable for searching for particular text strings. A later version (v1.3, available from its author, Gary Smith of Brisbane) can even handle PowerPacked documents, so it's ideal for searching text files on MegaDiscs. CONCLUSION A hard drive makes computing a real pleasure. If you don't already have one, please think about adding one to your Amiga - it will turn any ordinary Amiga into a home computing powerhouse. © Leigh Murray Queanbeyan NSW February 1995 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43 !¡ 43