what do you think of drvspace?

[steppenwolf]

what do you think of drvspace?

[Eeyore]

It's good and it's bad. I'm running Windows 95 and 98 on my machines on DriveSpace. It is not a lack of space. I'm running it on a 40gb drive. But I like to experiment. I can set up the Wiindows on a drive space drive and copy the whole thing at DOS. So I can change installations either by selecting a different CVF or copying a different one.

One limitation is it must be run from a FAT16 partition. But I can store the file on a FAT32, CDROM or ZIP disk. I haven't been able to tell the difference when the computer is running from the compressed drive. There is a slight delay in bootup as ther drive loads.

There is a risk of losing everything if there is a corruption of the file. But backing it up to a CDRW makes it quite easy to get back if something goes wrong.

DOS memory is reduced as DS3 uses quite a bit of conventional memory, even with memory optimization.

I have been running it on my 233mhz Tyan for a year. Just installed on my Intel 500mhz. I run it as R drive The flexibility is that I can shift the drive letter by adding a second drive as primary, and Windows will still run as its drive letter remains R. My objective has been to set it up, write it to a CD, then have it load to a Ramdisk and run. I've had limited success so far in running without a hard drive using this method. It makes for a rather uncorruptable Windows. No boot sector to infect. And every boot is exactly the same.

Why do you ask?
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Dennis
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[steppenwolf]

thanks for reply..you say you run it with no harddrive?

i asked because i bought an old laptop with drive h drvspace and i wondered if it was slowing it and a guy i met said he hated doublespace

i formated c and h well i refdisked it and its all changed now
..it has only a 500 mb drive 25 in drive d now so it has 480 about for c.. and it seems to work pretty good...it seems impossible to find how many mhz cpu this is

[Eeyore]

you say you run it with no harddrive?

I have been running Emergency Windows 95 on computers with no hard drive for a while. It is very limited. I wanted Windows 98 fully functional. Now that I have 512mb of RAM on a computer, I have been trying to get that going.

DOS 6.x (with Windows 3.x) can mount a Drivespace drive at the command prompt using DRVSPACE.EXE. That program is not included with Windows 9.x. So you can only mount a drive in Windows or by setting it up in the DRVSPACE.INI file. Since the RAMDISK does not exist at bootup, there was no way to mount it using the DRVSPACE.INI file. But I discovered in the Windows 98 Startup Disk Help file that SCANDISK has the limited ability to mount a drive (DRVSPACE.000) at the Command Prompt.

So I have a boot disk with the DRIVESPACE files, including DRVSPACE.INI, which sets up a 300mb RAMDISK (R drive). Then the CVF is copied to that RAMDISK. Then Scandisk is used to mount the drive (which reports about 600mb) after which Windows can be run.

I have only had limited success as the video drivers failed in normal boot. So I have only gotten to Safe Mode at this point. I also had to create a second RAMDRIVE to act as C drive. I will have to experiment with Video modes to get it working.

While I have had some Windows programs conflict when DRVSPACE is loaded at bootup, these were rare. A program like Wiindows or your word processor, load into memory and no longer access the hard drive. So they are unaffected by Drivespace once started. Games that access the drive to run , wav files, video files and the like, will slow down the system if they are stored on the compressed drive. If they are stored on an uncompressed drive, you should note no effect of the DriveSpace. Files like MP3s are already compressed so there is nothing to gain by storing them on a DriveSpace drive.

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Dennis
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[steppenwolf]

where do you find the time for all this ? windows on floppy? and with the internet as well? is the screen black?

[Eeyore]

Actually it's taken years. I generally think of what to try out while doing something else. Sort of "background processing". The Drivespace Windows was easy as once I had the Windows set up on a normal compressed drive, I only had to copy the CVF to a CDRW. I just happened to read the Help file on the Windows 98 Startup disk, which I grabbed on to the part about mounting the compressed drive.

The screen, when I boot is colors and bars as if I had the wrong video driver for the card. But the same CVF worked when on a hard drive.

I haven't gone back to experimenting with it yet as my primary computer, Asus P4S533, died. Then my backup machine failed to boot. I have finally swapped drives around so I am back in limited operation until I get the Asus back. I had 4 machines. The Intel, which has a 500mhz processor had Windows XP on it. I had to get Windows 98 drivers for it hardware and get it set up to take the Asus' place. My Tyan 2 and 4 with PR166 and 233mhz are not fast enough nor have enough memory for my experiments. And I haven't got my CD Writer set up on any of them yet.

Interstingly, the Intel with XP played videos with pauses and glitches. With Windows 98se on the same machine, the Videos play fine. I'm not an XP fan.

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Dennis
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[steppenwolf]

i wonder if i can take a 5oo mb drive and use dos 3,0 and make 15 partions on it


i dont know why i want to

[Eeyore]

I've heard of people using all the letters up doing this. I'm sure its doable. I haven't used DOS 3.0 so I don't know its limitations.

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Dennis
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