[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Future (post E 2.0) idea




     I was just thinking today, and a matter of curiosity came up.  The
problem I have with HFV files (beyond the little bug that for now limits
them to 128 MB) is that they are simply a large, combersome file on my
hard drive, which makes backing up my hard drives all that much more
interesting.  It is a wonderful innovation, don't get me wrong, but in the
future, especially post-7.5 drop-in, I can think of an additional means
which might make some people a little more happy.

     Right now, Executor can format floppies only, I believe.  I've kind
of run into the problem lately of wishing it could format SyQuest
cartridges, and this made me wonder if Executor could be setup to format
hard drive partitions sometime in the future.  I would imagine this wouldn't
be a problem after MacOS is able to be dropped in, assuming that like the
1.44 MB disks, the physicality of the disks is the same (which may be a 
grossly erroneous assumption on my part), to use its hard disk utility to
format hard drives.  Of course, if this were possible, it would be absolutelu
vital for ARDI to rig a flag that would tell the OS *_NOT_* to format the
boot partition!

     Still, I think a hard drive partition could make Executor a more
integrated part of the PC itself, which can only better ARDI's market.  That
way, people who don't like the idea of a multi hundred meg file on their
primary drive can fool themselves into thinking they have a "separate" disk
for Mac, without having to go out and buy a pre-mac formatted hard disk.
(Then again, the differences between SCSI and IDE may be the reason behind this
.)

     Another benefit (which admittedly would'nt matter in the post-MacOS
dropping stage) would be the possibility of multi-tasking.  Right now, the
HFV file must be in the same directory as EXECUTOR.EXE, and since you
can't launch Executor twice from the same directory (since it won't let you
open the exsystem.hfv file twice) your HFV file is only accessible in one
instance, whereas a hard disk partition would be available from anywhere.

     Anyone have any thoughts?

--Gene


Follow-Ups: