RE: creating digital panos

[Drew Eschbacher <dreweschbacher@xxxxxxx>]

The FAT32 vs FAT16 issue has nothing to do with printing.  Printing speed
is limited to the speed of the parallel port and the size of the spooler
memory in the printer.

The difference in FAT32 vs FAT16 for disk accesses is virtually none for
modern drives.  The speed of the disk access is determined by the RPM of
the drive, the interleaving (mostly none), the size of the disk cache, and
the specific hardware and software of the read/write heads (EIDE/SCSI).
EIDE can support a data transfer rate of 32MB per second.  Ultra2 SCSI
supports a data transfer rate of 40MB per second.  The FAT is a scheme for
putting data on a disk, the hardware of the disk and it's embedding
programming determines the speed of disk accesses.

If you must have the fastest disk access then get an Ultra2 SCSI controller
and an Ultra2 SCSI drive.  It will beat any EIDE drive disk access speed.
However, this all depends on the computer the RAM, the video card, the
video ram, etc.  I would suggest that the most cost effective items to
upgrade are the computer RAM and the VIDEO RAM.  Maximize both and you will
notice a difference in the speed of everything.

I'm sorry to get so technical but this FAT discussion is just incorrect.
If you can, use FAT32.  You can get more information on your hard drive for
the same amount of drive space.  Remember that your hard drives are full of
tens of thousands of files from Microsoft, Adobe, and others and that those
files are rarely larger than a cluster in size.  
    
Thanks for the soapbox

Drew Eschbacher
dreweschbacher@xxxxxxx



>
>Small clusters (FAT32) = more clusters/file  = slower read / write
>Large clusters (FAT16) = fewer clusters/file = faster readings.
>Difference is not huge though and you are limited to 2GB of partitions.
>On the other hand advantage is that  Windows NT reads it, while it can
>not read FAT32.
>Life is trade offs...
>
>> ----------
>> From: 	Jesse Goff[SMTP:jesse@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>> Sent: 	Wednesday, February 17, 1999 8:08 PM
>> To: 	panorama-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: 	RE: creating digital panos
>> 
>> 
>> >"200Megs picture files, actually is faster, 'cause smaller clusters
>> means"
>> 
>> 
>> "what" actually is faster?  which format?
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 	|        J e s s e    G o f f     P h o t o g r a p h y
>> 	|        1 0 9     M i n n a    S t r e e t     # 4 2 8
>> 	|        S a n   F r a n c i s c o,   C A    9 4 1 0 5
>> 	|        w   w   w . g  o  f  f  p  h  o  t  o . c  o  m
>> 	|        s t u d i o :   4  1  5    7  7  7    3  7  0  0
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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