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- Below is some data comparing the various versions of the RESTORE utility.
- Items compared include program size, number of active directories able to be
- handled, amount of disk I/O done, and selected execution times.
-
- The hardware used for all these comparisons was a 9.216 MHz SB180 with a
- Seagate ST225 hard disk partitioned into 4 logical drives of 5184K each. The
- controller was a Xebec 1410A controlled through the SCSI port on the SB180's
- COMM180-M-S expansion card. The allocation group size on this disk (the BLS
- value in the DPB) is 4096 bytes.
-
- Section 1: Program sizes.
-
- The following sizes are the actual sizes of the assembled program, in bytes,
- as reported by the linker, as well as the space required to store the program
- on disks with BLS values of 1K, 2K, and 4K.
-
- Program Size Disk Block Size
- Name (bytes) 1K blocks 2K blocks 4K blocks
-
- RESTOREI.COM 4421 5K 6K 8K
- RESTOREZ.COM 4225 5K 6K 8K
- FRESTORI.COM 3319 4K 4K 4K
- FRESTORZ.COM 3154 4K 4K 4K
-
- Section 2: Directory-size Capabilities.
-
- The following shows the maximum number of active directory entries that each
- version of the program can handle. Remember that the maximum number of
- directory entries that may be on the disk (the DRM value) is of no
- significance. Only active directory entries are seen by the program.
- Included is an estimate of the amount of disk space that the indicated number
- of directory entries can control. This assumes that the 'average' directory
- entry in the directory of a hard disk with 4K allocation groups has 2.8 blocks
- allocated to it. I have found this to be an average value for the 16-19
- Megabytes of data that is usually on my hard disk. All values assume a 48K
- TPA and 4K blocks. You can add 32 directory entries and 352K of disk space to
- the numbers shown for each kilobyte of TPA over 48K that you have in your
- system.
-
- Program Max # of Active Approximate Kbytes of disk
- Name Directory Entries storage controlled
-
- RESTOREI.COM 1268 13948
- RESTOREZ.COM 1274 14014
- FRESTORI.COM 1174 12914
- FRESTORZ.COM 1179 12969
-
- So, each version has more than enough space to handle the directory of any
- 'standard' CP/M disk (maximum logical disk size of 8192K), as well as most
- disks on 'expanded' CP/M-type systems (32 Meg per disk). The only people who
- might have problems are those with large non-standard disks with a DRM of 2048
- and 90% of the files on the disk only have one block allocated, OR those with
- a block size larger than 4K. For 8K blocks, reduce the numbers above by 256
- entries and 2816K each.
-
- Section 3: Disk Read/Write Data.
-
- The major advantage of RESTORE over FRESTORE is the significant reduction in
- the amount of disk reading & writing required. The following data shows, for
- each of the four partitions of my disk, the statistics printed by the
- indicated version of the utility after it finishes analyzing the disk, with
- one modification: since both versions do read-after-write CRC verification of
- each group written to the disk, the number of reads shown below is twice the
- number of reads reported by F/RESTORE.
-
- For each item, the values shown are for RESTORE/FRESTORE, i.e. the value
- printed by RESTORE, a '/', and the value printed by FRESTORE.
-
- Logical Drive
- A B C D
- # of Active Directory Entries 423 394 391 278
- # of Blocks Allocated 1007 973 937 1177
- # of Directory Entries requiring 20/ 23/ 23/ 60/
- relocation (RESTORE only)
- # of Groups requiring relocation
- (FRESTORE only) /1003 /922 /925 /1148
- # of Directory Rewrites 20/417 23/383 23/385 60/269
- # of Group Reads (including the 248/3348 228/3720 270/3696 794/4540
- read after each write)
- # of Group Writes 124/1674 114/1860 135/1848 397/2270
-
- Some totals for the entire disk:
- RESTORE FRESTORE
- # of Directory Rewrites 126 1454
- # of Group Reads 1540 15304
- # of Group Writes 770 7652
-
- In summary, FRESTORE does about 10 times as much disk I/O as RESTORE.
-
- Section 4: Execution times.
-
- The times required to restore disks A & C above were as follows:
-
- RESTORE - Disk A 12 min 13.9 sec
- FRESTORE - Disk C 1 hr 15 min 2.2 sec
-
- So, RESTORE recovered a disk with comparable fragmentation in about one sixth
- of the time FRESTORE would have taken. Note, however, that it only moved one
- fifteenth the amount of data. This is because RESTORE spends about half its
- time (on my system) in compute-bound procedures (rebuilding the free-space
- table after every fourth directory rewrite). So, on a slower CPU, RESTORE
- might take one fourth the time that FRESTORE would rather than a sixth. Also,
- the 8080 version of RESTORE is significantly slower compared to the Z80
- version (about 6% slower) than the 8080 version of FRESTORE is when compared
- to the Z80 version of that program (less than 1% slower).
-
- But, the advantage of RESTORE is not only in reduced execution time, but, as
- stated above, in reduced disk thrashing. For those with drives that have a
- tendency to overheat under heavy use (see the .DOC file for comments), the new
- version of RESTORE should cause a markedly lower disk error rate (ideally,
- zero) than these users had after using the original, fully-relocating version.
-
- Steve Dirickson 7 June 87