Labels:text | screenshot | purple | violet | colorfulness | magenta OCR: | OPTune v1.3 | Disk Optimizer | by Tony Curro Optimization, like backup, should be a way of life to a computer user. Keeping our hard drive in optimal running performance is very important. I believe a hard disk should have a low-level format and DOS format at least once every six months. Your hard drive is constantly running; over time, the heads do tend to stray a bit. So, a file you saved, may be a millimeter off where it was the last time you saved it. This is considered normal, but you can avoid this with a program like PTune . OPTune, by Gazelle Software, will take care of most of these problems. OPTune, only requires 256K of memory on your system (more if you have a drive larger than 32MB), and will work on a PC, XT, AT or higher computer. OPTune is also the only disk optimizer fully compatible with Q-DOS OPTune comes on both 5.25" and 3.5" disks, which are included in the same package. The program is so small that it comes on 1 disk. Do not let the size fool you though. OPTune makes up in power what it lacks in size . Before you start OPTune, you should follow one precaution: BACKUP I am a strong advocate of backing up my system, before I try any type of software that alters my disk. While, I had no problem using OPTune, and didn't need the backup, it is always better to be safe. Running OPSTART from either A: or B: will install the program to your hard disk. Just follow the prompts. You can change your colors and have several other options here. If you do not wish to change the colors, it can be done later. GZ_SAVE is one of the options. This program, run once, for each logical drive, creates a hidden file in the root directory. This can help you recover from an accidental format, as it saves your DOS information. Each time you run OPTune, it stores any changes made in your system, into this file. You must insert a SET line in your AUTOEXEC. BAT file to point to the OPTune directory. This way any changes made to the configuration of OPTune can be found. Disable any CACHE software you are running. Do NOT have any multitasking programs running, as they can be writing to disk at the same time as OPTune, and might corrupt your data. However, OPTune comes with . PIF files for use with Windows. I ran it successfully in Windows 3.1. I did not have anything else running in Windows except OPTune, so no other programs were accessing the disk. Once started you will see a bar with the commands: PTIMIZE TUNE-DISK CHECK DISK VERIFY DISK QUIT Pressing the first letter of the above options, will take you to a drop-down menu. Most of the time you will be using the OPTIMIZE menu. The first selection you see is OPTIONS. Here you control many aspects of how OPTune works, from choosing how to sort files and directories, to read-after write and Verify. The last makes sure that the information was moved correctly. This will slow down the program, but is a safe precaution that you should use. There are three different kinds of compression methods: Normal, Packed, and File Realignment. I will give a brief description of each: Normal - The quickest. It defragments all files. It will not remove Normal empty spaces between files. Packed - It will put all files end-to-end, removing all empty spaces between the files. File Realignment - The longest. It does the same as "Packed," with the addition of physically arranging files on the hard disk in the same order as the directory entries. Tune-Disk test your hard drive to make sure that its low-level format is working at peak performance. If it is not, OPTune can tune your drive so that it will run at top performance. Verify FIX, using the bit patterns, also checks the hard drive, to verify that all sectors can be read. It will mark and lock out any bad sectors in finds, so that a program cannot write to it. If you have data there, it will move it to a safe area, and then lock out that sector. These two options will not work with all rives. I have an ESDI, non standard drive, and could not run either. Gazelle offers a 60 day money-back guarantee with their product. In addition they have an 800 number for technical support. Product Information OPTune v1.3 Disk Optimizer Gazelle Systems 305 North 500 West Provo, UT 84601 800 786-3278
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