From: lauusitalo@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi
Subject: Re: Stacker 3.0 Questions
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications.
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 10:42:28 GMT

In article <rnk2ps@rpi.edu>, duchad@aix02.ecs.rpi.edu (David Benedict Ducharme) writes:
> In article <Bz6tCw.Cv@news.cso.uiuc.edu> mlandaue@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael C Landauer) writes:
>>
>>I am considering buying Stacker 3.0 as my 40MB hard drive is almost full.
>>I would like to ask a couple questions to those who have used this product.
>>
>>1.  What improvements were made from version 2.0?
>>
>>2.  Has anyone encountered any bugs?
>>
>>3.  Are there any programs that don't work with it?
>>
>>4.  To anyone using it with a 40MB hard drive:  How much space did it add?
>>
>>Thanx in advance!
>>Merry Xmas!
>>
>>Mike Landauer
>>mlandaue@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu
>>
> in addition I was wondering if, and how much Stacker affects the programs
> that are running.  Does it slow it down,
> 
> Also, when you are storing to a tape backup, say a Colorado 250 Jumbo,
> how is the data saved.  If I originally have a 160 meg drive, and
> Stack it, will I be able to backup the "320 Megs" of the 160 
> drive.
> 
> Thank you
> duchad@rpi.edu

People seem to have little misunderstands about stacker. It uses one huge
file containing all files in packed format. When there is need for file
stacker unpacks it from that file. This happens automatically and you
can not notice it. It does not pack files like PKlite and such exe packers.
They affect one file at time so to say. If you compress your files using
PKZIP or PKLite or any other "conventional" compress program you affect
one file at time. These you can backup to tape individually and you can
save tape space. But if you copy stacked files to tape they take just
as much tape space as normally without stacker. You have to compress them
separately by some program to save space. You could backup that huge
stackvol file. But restoring individual files would be impossible.
I thought that these tape backup programs had their own compress routines.

I do not know if there is possibility to stack tape drive acting like
disk drive. But is there any need for that?

Speed is one thing people often complain about stacker. I am not sure
if these people have ever used stacker. Slow harddrives like
old Seagates >28ms will be quicker when using stacker. Because HD does
not have to make so many rotations and seeks to find program which is
now located in smaller area. When using fast disks this is not same.
It might be faster without stacker but little smaller also.
If the speed is must then consider that HW option. Although bigger and
faster HD might be cheaper. Tough choice. Anyway you will add that
stacker later when your bigger HD comes to 99% full. :)

Stacker adds as much space as you want. You can change that scaling number
to whatever you want. But this is only part of the truth. This is only
used to show free space numbers and has nothing (or very little) to do 
with real free space. 

If you have disk full of zips then there is no need or use for stacker. You 
could not get any more space. But if you have normal exe and txt stuff then
adding stacker increases disk capacity to about 1.5 times old capacity.
So you could get about 60 MB real storage capacity. May be even 80 MB
if you have "loose" files.

If you were asking about improvements to 2.0 then look previous postings
where was a notify about these. Someone said that speed was better but
compress ratio has not changed (at least substantionally).

I have used stacker 2.0 for quite a long time and have had almost no
problem with it. AOTP had some sort of problems but they are solved.
Mostly it is because some program behaves like it shouldn't an I guess
with these programs problems can arise with plain DOS.

Hope that this clarifies something somewhere. Perhaps there are some
bugs in this writing but correct me if any.


Merry Xmas to you both and all you out there!!

Lauri

ps. I have nothing to do with Stacker except using it. So these are my
    own opinions and observations. Wrong or right.

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