Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: Out of Memory in PC Tools Compress and Norton SpeedDisk
From: gah@trc.mew.mei.co.jp (Gary A. Hildebrand)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 07:44:58 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Matsushita Electric Works Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.

All,

>I have a very large SCSI disk of about 500 MB capacity running on a system
>under MS-DOS 4.01, and I'm running out of memory in PC Tools Compress and
>Norton Utilities Speed Disk.  The versions are 6.0 for both PC Tools and
>Norton.  The disk is more than 75% full with over 400 directories and 9000
>files, but the disk has less than 1024 cylinders and has been usable in the
>past with these utilities with far less files and directories.

>Just to make these programs run, I have stripped CONFIG.SYS and
>AUTOEXEC.BAT down to bare bones, allowing 577K of free conventional memory.
>I'm not even loading a memory manager at this point, since there's nothing
>left in the startup files that could be high-loaded with version 4.01 of
>MS-DOS.  I'm very surprised to see that such recent versions of these tools
>would not take advantage of expanded or extended memory to allow the
>defragmentation of what will soon be, a fairly average sized disk.  I
>shouldn't have to use multiple hard disk partitions or upgrade the DOS
>version just to accomplish this feat.

>Would an even later version of either of these two utilities exist, that
>uses expanded/extended memory to get the job done, or perhaps an altogether
>different product?  What about SpinWrite?

>Please send e-mail responses directly to me, as I do not normally read this
>newsgroup.  Thanks in advance for any help on this matter!

>Gary
--
>/ Gary A. Hildebrand                 Internet: gah@mew.mei.co.jp       \
>/  Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.   UUCP:     uunet!mew.mei.co.jp!gah \
>/   13-2, Mita 5-chome, Minato-ku    Fax:      03-3451-0793            \
>/    Tokyo 108, JAPAN                Tel:      03-3452-4941            \

NOBODY should have to use Dos 4.01. It takes up more memory than Dos 5.0, even 
when Dos 5 is not loaded high! If you don't want to upgrade (which is not a    
good decision), get a floppy disk with Dos 5 on it and edit the config.sys so  
that whatever device drivers required to access your hard disk are loaded.     
Add the line DOS=HIGH to the config.sys. This loads the Dos kernel 
into high memory and saves you at least 50K. Then boot from the from 
the floppy disk.      
                                                                       
        
   You should also partition your hard disk. From what I've read in 
your posting, I assume you have not partitioned it at all. 500 MB in one 
partition  ??!! You should have at least 3 partitions, in this case. 
One possible cause for the programs reporting "out of memory" is because 
they have to keep track  of the large number of directories and files in 
your drive. 400 directories and 9000 files!!! Imagine the amount of memory 
required to keep track of that.     
                                                     
   So I have only two words for you: UPGRADE and PARTITION!            
        
__________________________________________________________________________
Chan Lee Meng          \  "Let us endeavour to live so that when we die,
739chan1@gw.wmich.edu    \   even the undertaker will be sorry."
X92chan3@gw.wmich.edu      \   - Mark Twain.
Western Michigan University. \ 
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps