P3D Re: computer system for 3D graphics and photos

[Paul Talbot <ptww@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dan Shelley wrote:

> 5. Get lots of HD space 8MB will not last as long as it sounds like it
> might.

Dan probably means 8 Gig won't last as long as it sounds like it might.
And there's a very good reason for that:  large hard drives set up as
a single partition are extremely inefficient.  In typical use, it is
highly unlikely an 8 Gig drive would hold even 4 Gig of actual data.
This list is not the place to go in to the details, but if you would
like to find out how much of your hard drive is being wasted (and how
much you could possibly reclaim by reorganizing it), download my free
Disk Appettite Analyzer.*  Visit http://members.aol.com/ptww/ and
follow the link that reads: Learn why your hard disk's real capacity
might be half as much as you think!  (You can also download daa.zip
via ftp.)  (DAA requires vbrun300.dll, available free on the web; and
an unzip utility.  I have no idea what DAA does under Win '95.  Hey,
it's free!)

Example: someone upgrading from a 500 Meg drive to a 1.01 Gig hard
drive would likely find they have only about 300 Meg free space after
the upgrade.  So if you noticed you seem to be eating up your big hard
drive at an astonishing rate, it is not your imagination!

For folks working on 3D graphics and/or video, where a lot of
large data files would be common, I would suggest setting up a
large partition dedicated to the large graphics data files, and
multiple smaller partitions (preferably under 512M to keep the
cluster size down to 8K)

Paul Talbot

*I just ran the progam myself for the first time in a long time, and I
notice the results chart is only set up to handle drives up to 2G.  I'd
be curious to hear what the program does on a larger drive, if someone
has a >2G (local) hard drive to try it on.  mailto:ptww@xxxxxxxxx


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