🚀 go-pugleaf

             Recently I aquired four formaters:  the Atari standard,
         the Twister, format11 and DCformat.  All but the Atari came
         over the net and I would like to thank the people who posted
         them- even though I can't remember the names.  Over dinner one
         evening I deceided to compare the read from and write to
         times of these four formaters.  I collected this information
         using the time command of the Gulam shell, so the times are
         in units of 5 millisecond clock ticks. The Gulam command df
         reports the disk sizes. The list is ordered as to increasing
         size of formatted disk.

         formater         size(kb)       write to       read from
         --------         --------       --------       ---------
         Atari              728           12,354 	 7,586
         Twister            810		   5,470         5,112
         DCformat           830            5,547         4,864
         format11           925           14,933         8,421

         Reformatting the same disk on each trial, I moved 220 kb of
         files (programs, archives, 1st Word documents et al) from a
         ram disk d: to disk drive a: using the Gulam sequence "time
         mv *.* a:".  This gave the "write to" time.  I then moved all
         the files back to the ram disk with "time mv a:\*.* d:".
         This gave the "read from" timing. All these operations were
         moves ie copy and delete, so the more common straight copy
         will be faster:  this is a comparison not an absolute
         performance test.

             As most of us already know the Atari standard formater
         produces small,  slow disks.  Format11 makes a big but
         enormously slow disk; although, it is so large as to be a
         suitable archival material, but not for everyday use.  I find
         Twister and DCformat very close in performance and good for
         everyday use.  I personally use DCformat for its versitiliy;
         but only after haveing used and been satisfied with Twister
         for many months.  The DCformatter is more versitile, and this
         has swayed me to its side.  I should mention that I used
         DCfomatter in its 82 track, 10 sector/track fast mode with the
         write verify turned off; the other three have only one way to
         use them. 

         Disclaimer:  I neither know nor understand anyone who writes
                      or distributes formaters, these four included.

         P.S.     I'd still like to hear from someone about my desire
                  to find a resizeable and reset survivabl ram disk.
                  At least tell me why it's hard to do.  I got no responce
		  to an earily inquiry except for requests to pass any
		  information along.















-- 
	Guy Metcalfe                            gpm@dukempd.uucp  
	Duke University Dept. of Physics	mcnc!duke!dukempd!gpm 
	Durham, N.C.      27706			despot@tucc.bitnet