This utility increases the throughput of copying and duplicating files with the Apple® Finder®. Both file copying and duplication speeds are improved by as much as 320%, and copy rates of 120 MB per minute have been achieved. All mountable disk devices benefit from F.A.S.T. copy speed increases including floppies, fixed hard drives, removable hard drives, optical & CD ROM drives, and volumes mounted over networks. Network speed increases are 25-30%.
Zooming Rectangles may be turned off as well, making Finder windows open and close more quickly.
There are no memory resident control panels, extensions, INITs or CDEVs that may conflict with other software. F.A.S.T. modifies the Finder, so copy functions are done as they always were, but now happen much faster.
This application supports all color and black & white systems running System 7.0 or greater. If you need on-line assistance, full Balloon Help is supported by all applications.
<<< WARNING >>>
Installation of F.A.S.T. should only be done to an unmodified Finder and System. Other programs may have left your system in an unknown state. If you believe you have modified your Finder or System files with another application, reinstall a fresh System 7 on your machine before using F.A.S.T..
Operation
Upon launching the F.A.S.T. application, you will be presented with the opening dialog.
F.A.S.T. must modify certain aspects of your system software. In order to do this, all applications, including the Finder must be shut down. Clicking Cancel will quit the application without effecting your system or any currently running applications.
Quitting all running applications will be done for you by clicking Continue. Once all applications have been quit properly, you will see the F.A.S.T. dialog:
A). Title Region:
Clicking in this region will show the applications About Box. Once the About Box is displayed, click and hold the Pause button to momentarily stop the scrolling information. Click the OK button to return to the application or wait for all of the information to be displayed.
B). Enable Fast Copying:
This option maximizes file transfer block size, allowing the Macintosh to read more information per block, reducing the number of blocks it must read to complete a copy. This greatly enhances copying speed.
C). Use Maximum Buffer Size:
Checking this box maximizes the copy buffer area, allowing the Macintosh to read more blocks into memory before writing to disk. F.A.S.T. will use all available memory for copying, so having 20MB of RAM allows approximately 17MB file copies with one read and one write. This is over 50 times more efficient than the standard Finder. The larger the file, the more benefit you will see from this option.
D). Disable Zooming Rectangles:
The Disable Zooming Rectangles Check Box will enable or disable the drawing of the ghost rectangles that draw to and from opening and closing windows and applications. On slower machines (SI and below), window draw-time is significantly reduced with this option enabled (checked).
E). The Remove Button:
This will remove all aspects of F.A.S.T. from your system, returning it to it’s original functionality. This has the same effect as unchecking all option boxes and clicking the Install button.
F). The Cancel Button:
This will exit F.A.S.T., leaving your system unchanged.
G). The Install Button:
Clicking Install will update your Finder with the settings you have specified.
NOTE: To remove F.A.S.T., simply uncheck all boxes and click Install, or use the Remove button.
After Installation
If you installed the Fast Copying feature of F.A.S.T., your Finder copy speed has been enhanced. The performance on your Macintosh will vary depending on a number of variables; Maximum Buffer Size option on or off, amount of RAM, type and speed of CPU, speed of disk device, and size of files being copied.
When a copy is being done the text in the Finder copy dialog will read "F.A.S.T. copies to go:"
The message in the copy dialog has been changed so you know if F.A.S.T. is installed. If you remove F.A.S.T., the message will be returned to “Items remaining to be copied:”.
Troubleshooting
• Under certain circumstances you may have memory problems when working with suitcases (Fonts/DAs) with Large Copy Buffers enabled and System 7 Tune-Up NOT present. Install System 7 Tune-Up 1.1.1 or newer. If this still does not solve the problem, disable the Large Buffers option, leaving Fast Copying enabled.
• Users of SpeedyCD may have memory problems since F.A.S.T. and SpeedyCD try to utilize the same memory space. To allow SpeedyCD and F.A.S.T. to work together, simply disable the Large Copy Buffers option.
