From: wabe@ukc.ac.uk (W.A.B.Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: KnifeST
Date: 2 Jan 93 13:28:32 GMT
Reply-To: wabe@ukc.ac.uk (W.A.B.Evans)
Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

>
>The mag contains a offer to buy the KnifeSt manual plus "a coupon 
>which enables you to upgrade to KnifeST 2 when it becomes available" 
>for 14.95 pounds.
>

	As an old owner of KNIFEST, I can vouch that there certainly is
plenty of room for improvement!!

	Admittedly I am used to a much earlier version than the 1.10 version
that recently came with ST-Format. In my opinion that "much heralded" package
was very lacking in useful features and tedious to use. Whenever I needed some
disk repair work done I tended to avoid KNIFEST and use instead the PD tools
e.g.  FSCK by Georg Lohse and DLII and REORG by Simon Poole, and more recently
CLEANUP by ICD and some tools I developed myself.

	Further, KNIFEST does not appear to understand BGM Partitions - and I
was dissappointed to note that this remains true even for this Version 1.10
- at least in some of the features I tried out. Apart from some tools I've 
written for my own use, ICD's CLEANUP is the only disktool I've come across
that deals correctly with these. I have to admit however I found the booklet
that came with KNIFEST useful in explaining FAT & Disk structures - what a
pity that so few books on the ST go into this "vital" information in
sufficient depth.

	I trust KNIFEST_2 will

 i/	CORRECTLY deal with BGM Partitions

 ii/	enable safety copies of both root directory FATS and subdirectory
FAT sectors to be saved to floppy in such a way that these can be restored
if a calamity occurs. That way all the old files that have not been damaged
can easily be located and tested and the saving of this "directory record"
should be so quick that one could afford the time to do it often (daily?).
This feature would have been invaluable to me in the past when I had a
very old and dicey hard disk. Now that I developed a tool with (partially)
this feature, I also acquired a more reliable hard disk - and so do not need
it so much!! - but still, it should be part of a Disk Utility/Repair Package.

 iii/	incorporate some reorganising algorithm ( like Simon Poole's REORG ).
Of course, this must work with BGM Partitions also. ( REORG itself predates
(I think) BGM and extended (32 Mbyte) partitions - and so will not handle
these correctly - any chance of an upgrade Simon? - like the one you did
for UNITERM not so long ago). Incidentally ICD should also incorporate some
defragmenting option into their CLEANUP (perhaps they've done so in more
recent versions than the one I've got?).

 iv/	have a hard disk back-up option. I know this is unlikely as HISOFT
have another package for this - but really they OUGHT NOT, as this task is
so akin to the analyses that are germane to KNIFEST and (profit motive not
forbidding) could so naturally be incorporated.

	The original KNIFEST was merely marketed by Hisoft but developed by
someone else (sorry I don't have his (Polish?) name to hand). Now it appears
that Hisoft are attempting to patch it up. I hope they can do it better than
the woefully inadequate telephone support answers I've got to questions 
concerning KNIFEST I posed to them in the past! If (as I suspect) their
patchwork will NOT come up with the above (& some more) desirable features,
I'm afraid that most will find that the most useful thing that comes with
KNIFEST_2 will STILL be the booklet.

				Sincerely,	W. Alan B. Evans
						[ wabe@ukc.ac.uk ]
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st