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1993-09-10
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Program Name: MakeLoad ver 1.31
BBS File Name: MLOAD131.ZIP
Program Type: Archiver
Author: Tony DePasquale
SW Reg: $25
Comment: Saves lots of hard drive space
Do you remember when you thought 40 megs would be plenty
of disk space for your needs? Then you found out that even
120 megs wasn't nearly enough! With the size of todays
programs, your hard drive can fill very quickly. A typical
game can use up 7 or 8 megs or more. There are ways to
increase the storage of your hard drive with such utilities
as DOUBLE SPACE that comes with DOS 6.0 or STACKER. In the
last issue of Uncle Hanks Newsletter, I even showed you a
simple little batch file that saves space by compressing your
program files into a ZIP file. These methods work very well,
but you may not want to use them for some reason, or maybe
you want MORE! Ok, how about a program that not only
compresses your files but moves them to a floppy disk as
well? Unless you are fortunate enough to be able to afford
any size hard drive when the need arises, I urge you to take
a look at MakeLoad ver 1.31 by Tony DePasquale of RamSoft
Software.
MakeLoad gives you back disk space by physically
removing your program from your hard drive. Don't panic,
your program is safely stored on a floppy disk! In fact, it
will even create multiple volumes if it needs too. What
you'll end up with is a set of numbered floppy disks and a
hard drive just waiting for more programs to be added.
Installing MakeLoad is simply a matter of running the
unique install program. Mr DePasquale goes out of his way to
make the installation as painless as possible. This is
definitely not a "load-and-go" program, but even the install
program has a tutorial. I recommend you choose to take
advantage of the tutorial when you install the software and
then go through the main tutorial once you have everything
installed. This makes the program a bit time consuming the
first time, but it is well worth it.
Now, once everything is in it's place and you know what
to do, using the program is pretty straight forward.
Although it probably won't be necessary, now would be a good
time to do a complete backup of your system. If you're like
me, you're long overdo anyway. You'll also need to format
some disks and number them. You can use any size disk you
happen to have and even mix them if you want. Now, just move
to the directory you want to compress (or restore) and type
MLOAD. From there it's just a matter of choosing a menu
item. There are several options that you can use and/or
customize, but I'll leave that for you to explore. You could
even use it as a daily backup program.
I did a test to see just what MakeLoad can do. For a
test I chose my LEMMINGS directory. Off of that directory is
one that contains the second version of LEMMINGS and one with
some help files, bringing the total up to about 1.2 megs. I
was concerned at first that it might not read all of the
sub-directories. But it did. It will recognize anything off
of the parent directory. Keep in mind what is happening and
you will understand that it takes some time to do it's work.
I took just about 2 mins to compress and move the program to
a floppy disk and a bit over 1 min to restore.
As I said, the program is not designed for speed and the
author is quick to point that out. I'm not sure I'd want to
use it on my most used programs, but for the ones that get
little use but are too important to delete, MakeLoad can save
you a tremendous amount of space. And again, I want to
stress the importance of running the tutorials so you know
what to do. Set aside a few mins and give this program more
than a cursory look. It's definitely one that can help quite
a few people and with a registration of only $25, it seems
like a very good deal to me!