CASE HISTORY # 10 (CONCLUSION)
       by the Disk Doctor


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Copyright (C) 1988,  the Disk Doctor.

First published in the Rochester (PC)^3 News:
   Picture City PC Programming Club
   PO BOX 20342
   Rochester, NY 14602
The Disk Doctor may be contacted at this
address, or via CIS [73147,414].

This material may be reproduced for internal
use by other not-for-profit groups, provided
this copyright notice is included.
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4:30pm  (later that same day)
I walked up to N.'s desk.  "Well, are you
ready to run the disk optimizer on your
hard disk?"

"Yes, I'm all set." she answered.  "Just
as the doctor ordered:  I erased all my
unnecessary files, I cleaned up any lost
chains, and uninstalled my copy-protected
software."

"Okay.  I brought the optimizer program
over with me," I said, setting the disk
down on her table.  "But first, I'd like
to check out what one thing.  You told me
yesterday you didn't see any improvement
with BUFFERS.  Can I look and see what
you've got?"

"By all means, "  N. said as she stepped
aside.



4:31pm
I TYPEd \CONFIG.SYS and got the message:
'File not found'.  "N., what happened to
your CONFIG.SYS file?  I thought you said
you tried it out.  Did you erase it
already?"

"No.  I didn't touch it."

"Well, it must have gotten erased.  I
can't find it on your disk."

It should be right where..."  N. leaned
over the keyboard and changed directories
to \DBASE.  She entered a DIR command and
sure enough, "There it is."

"Why did you put there?" I asked in a
puzzled tone of voice.

"I don't know.  You told me to type it in
using EDLIN.  I must have working in the
\DBASE directory when I did it."  She
shrugged her shoulders.  "You said it
would primarily benefit my database
program, so that's where it ought to do
the most good, right?  I don't know."

"Okay, okay.  Now I understand what
happened.  Let me explain it to you.  DOS
reads in the CONFIG.SYS file (if there is
one) first thing, even before the
AUTOEXEC.BAT.  DOS only looks for this
file in one place, so unless it's in the
root directory, CONFIG.SYS won't take
effect."

"Oh, I didn't know that."

"I guess I didn't make that clear.  Let's
run a test now and see whether BUFFERS
gives you any improvement."  I started the
dBASE program.  "Give me the name of one
your database files, a good sized one."

"All right.  Ummm, VENDORS is probably the
biggest file..."

"Okay, I'll use that one.  Let me time it
as I load it in."  I pressed the Enter key
on the PC and the start button on my
wristwatch at the same time.

We both watched until the record counter
stopped.  "1 minute, 34 seconds,"  I read
off my stopwatch.  I wrote that time down
and reset the watch to zero.

"Now I'm going to run a SORT, and time
that." I entered the command and started
my stopwatch."


4:43pm
"5 minutes and 17 seconds.  Now let's do
it again.  This time with BUFFERS." I
COPYed CONFIG.SYS to the root directory
and rebooted her computer.  Then I changed
to \DBASE and repeated the process.

"1 minute, 24 seconds,"  I clocked the
initial loading of the VENDORS file.

"Well, that's a little faster," N. said
disappointedly.  "But it's nothing to get
really excited about."

"That's right, N.,"  I told her, "I didn't
expect to see much improvement initially.
That's because it still takes the same
amount of time to read in the file the
first time.  It's on subsequent accesses
that the cache comes in to play.  Now
watch as we sort."  I reset my watch and
started the sort.



4:52pm
"Wow!  3 minutes and 54 seconds!"  N. read
the time off my watch. "That's a lot
faster.  What, about 20% faster?  I can't
believe what a difference that one little
command makes."

"That's right.  A disk cache saves you
time, as well as wear and tear on your
hard drive."  I picked up my diskette and
placed in the drive. "And now, if it's
okay with you, I will go ahead with the
optimizing process."

"Will that speed things up another 20%?"

"No, maybe not that much.  But you'll
probably see a slight improvement.  There
are some other benefits, though.  By
cutting down head travel, optimizing will
also reduce wear on your drive."  I turned
to face her.  "The other advantage is that
contiguous files are a LOT easier to
unerase, should you accidentally delete a
bunch a files at the same time.
Otherwises, you have to search through all
the sectors manually and examine them, to
decide which pieces go together."

N. considered this for a moment.  "Yeah, I
can see how that would help.

"Straightening out your files periodically
is definitely a good idea. I run a program
like this once a month or so.  You can buy
this one program for under $50.  And a lot
of the disk utility packages, like Norton
and PCTOOLS, now include a disk optimizer.
In fact, there are a couple of public
domain optimizer programs out there now."


5:01pm
"So, are we all ready to go?  You're done
with your computer for today?"

"That's right."

I started up the optimizer program.
"There.  Let's just leave it running
overnight.  Be sure you don't forget and
accidently turn it off or kill the power
on your way out."

"You mean I might lose everything?"

"No, the program is written so you can't
lose any data.  But if the process is
interrupted in the middle, you have to
take some extra steps to put the pieces
back together again."

"Well, it's time for me to go home.  If I
have any more problems, I'll come and get
you tomorrow."  She pulled on her coat,
and waved as she started for the door.

"Fine.  And if I don't see you, then I'm
assume everything turned out all right.
Goodnight."