CHAPTER 5
Adding more Stacker drives
There's more than one type of disk drive in any given PC. Stacker is best known for increasing storage space on hard drives, but it also can work on RAM drives and removable disks, such as floppy diskettes, Bernoulli drives, and removable hard drives. If you have more than one hard drive in your system or have additional partitions on a single drive, then you can stack them as well. This chapter tells you the details.
This chapter is about creating additional Stacker drives. There are three types of drives Stacker can make, so this chapter covers them in three sections:
Creating additional Stacker drives
Stacking removable drives
Stacking RAM drives
Creating additional Stacker drives
In chapter 3, you created your first Stacker drive. Most likely it was your first hard drive C. If not, you might have stacked another hard drive (D, E, etc.) or created an empty Stacker drive using free disk space. Whatever, you can make even more Stacker drives at any time. All you need is an un-stacked drive to stack or enough free space on an uncompressed disk to create an empty Stacker drive.
Making more Stacker drives is possible using the various utilities copied on to your hard drive during Stacker's installation. The bulk of these utilities and what they can do are covered in chapter 9. For this chapter, the concentration is on the SETUP utility -- the same program you used to create your first Stacker drive.
Before installation
The SETUP program insists on a few things before you run it. As with the first Stacker drive you created, you'll need to shut down a few memory-resident programs (TSRs). If you want to do this manually, edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and stick a REM command in front of your memory-resident programs. If that's a bother, then the SETUP program will disable them for you.
SETUP isn't worried
about programs like DOSKEY or a mouse driver or even the pop-up variety of TSR.
What's deadly is Norton's Erase Protect or PC Tools' Data Monitor. Remove them.
Also get rid of FASTOPEN, truly a wretched program if there ever was one.
You also should remove any disk caching software before running SETUP. The nature of the disk caching software adds a bit of danger to the installation process. However, don't worry about this one, SETUP will sniff out any disk caches installed and refuse to run until they're disabled.
If the drive you're stacking contains copy-protected software, you should un-install it before stacking the drive. Because the installation procedure will move the file, this might activate the copy-protection scheme and render the application useless. Note that you don't need to do this if you're creating an empty Stacker drive.
Finally, if your system is a file server on a network or allows network access to your drives, unhook the network software before running SETUP. Nothing bad happens otherwise, but SETUP will recognize the networked drive and refuse to stack it. (This doesn't apply to Novell network servers, which cannot be stacked.)
A preview of what will happen
If you're just curious about what Stacker will do to your drives, run the PREVIEW utility that came with Stacker. This isn't required, but it will help you get an idea of what Stacker can do for you.
What PREVIEW does is to examine a hard drive and report back exactly what Stacker would do with the drive and how much extra space it would create. To see how this works, follow PREVIEW with the letter of the drive you want to Stack. For example:
C:\STACKER> PREVIEW D:
Above, Stacker will take a hard look at Drive D and decide exactly what Stacker can do with that drive. After a good, long evaluation process, you may see a screen similar to the one shown in Fig. 5-1. You'll see the projected compression ratio followed by the number of extra megabytes Stacker would create on the drive. You're decision now is to plow ahead with the SETUP program or re-think your strategy.
Figure 5-1. The results of the PREVIEW program's analysis.
Running the SETUP program
To add a new Stacker drive to your system, take the following steps:
1. Log to your STACKER directory, created when you originally installed Stacker. For example:
C:\> CD STACKER
The SETUP program
can be run from a Stacker drive, no problem. Don't let the host drive/Stacker
drive nonsense mentally confuse you at this point.
2. Run the SETUP program. Type SETUP at the command prompt:
C:\STACKER> SETUP
After pressing Enter, you'll see the same installation program you originally used to create your first Stacker drive. You won't get the personalize your copy or other questions you were asked when you initially installed Stacker. Otherwise, everything after that works the same as it did before. So, if you're comfortable here, feel free to skim up to the section titled, ``Post-installation discussion.''
3. If you need to, tell the SETUP program to disable your TSRs. Your system will reset and you'll continue with installation.
4. The SETUP program asks you to select a drive. This drive can either be entirely converted to a Stacker drive, or you can elect to create an "empty" Stacker drive using available space. Either way, you first must select the drive. Stacker will validate the drive.
5. Select whether you want to stack the entire disk and all its data or create an empty Stacker drive using free space. If you don't like the numbers you see at the top of the screen (total space/free space), then select the "Different Drive" button with the mouse or press Alt-D to choose another drive for Stacking.
Figure 5-2. Here Drive D is ready to be Stacked.
6. After selecting "Entire Drive" or "Free Space" Stacker will validate the drive. After that, select the Stack button. In Fig. 5-2, I'm selecting drive D to stack.
If you select to create a drive from free space, you'll see a summary screen allowing you to specify how much free space to devote to the drive, similar to the one shown in Fig. 5-3. Remember that the empty Stacker drive will be twice the size you specify.
Figure 5-3. Here free space on Drive D is used to create an empty Stacker drive.
What about the "Advanced Options" button?
There's no need to bother with the "Advanced Options" screen unless you know in advanced what's going to be stored on a Stacker drive. What it does is allow you to select a compression ratio and cluster size for the new drive.
If you're curious, you can set the expected compression ratio of the drive, as well as the cluster size used. For example, if you know the drive will contain highly compressible files (text files and graphics), you can select the "Advanced Options" button and enter 4.0 or even 8.0 to one as the compression. If the files stored on the drive are all going to be small, pick a small cluster size, say 4K. If they're going to be large, select a cluster size to match the average size of the file on the drive.
These two settings optimize the Stacker drive somewhat. But under normal circumstances they can be left alone. Additional information on presetting the compression ratio and cluster sizes can be found in chapter 9 under the CREATE command.
7. Stacker will stack the drive, compressing and copying files from the drive you select to the new Stacker drive or creating an empty Stacker drive. As with the first installation, this will take a while to complete.
8. After copying and compressing the files, Norton's Speed Disk will run, optimizing your drive. Again, this might take a few minutes to complete.
After Speed Disk, the SETUP program will scan the disk for defects. This process ensures that the disk is usable and avoids any future problems.
9. When everything is complete, Stacker will give you the option of stacking more drives or resetting. If you want to stack additional drives, feel free; start over again with step 3. Otherwise, select the Reset option and Stacker will reset your PC.
Post-installation discussion
Stacker works the same whether you're stacking one hard drive or several. If you've just added a second hard drive, the new lines in your CONFIG.SYS file will look something like this:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK D:\STACVOL.DSK
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM D:\STACVOL.DSK
The first line loads the STACKER.COM device driver and creates two Stacker drives. The first is STACVOL.DSK on drive C and the second is STACVOL.DSK on drive D. Fig. 5-4 shows the two hard drives in this system, C and D. The STACVOL.DSK program exists on both drives in column 1.
Figure 5-4. How two Stacker drives work.
In column 2 of Fig. 5-4, the STACKER.COM device driver has created the two Stacker drives. They're given the next highest drive letters in your system, E and F.
Column 3 of Fig. 5-4 shows how the SSWAP.COM program works. SSWAP switches the drive letters of the host drive and Stacker drive created on that host drive. In the figure, Stacker drive E becomes drive C and drive C becomes the host drive E. The same happens for Stacker drive F and host drive D.
Because you've stacked all the files on the drive, it makes sense to use the PC this way. All your old files from drive C are on the STACVOL.DSK file, which Stacker magically transforms into a real disk drive, E. That drive then is swapped back to drive C where you would expect this to be.
The nice part about this is that you can go to bed at night without thinking about it. Your PC will work just as it did before, only now you have more room on your hard drive(s).
If you want an
in-depth discussion of how this works, refer to ``What Stacker has done to your
system'' in chapter 4.
The STACKER utility,
covered in chapter 9, will tell you which drives on your system are host drives
and which are Stacker drives.
Avoiding the drive letter traffic jam
As you stack more and more hard drives, you eventually will run out of drive letters. DOS only gives you 26, for the letters A through Z. Drives A and B always are floppy drives and drive C is always your first hard drive. Anything extra, additional hard drives and hard drive partitions, RAM drives, network drives, and Stacker drives subtract from the total. Someday, you might run into the drive letter traffic jam.
Lucky for you, there is a solution. It's possible to use a Stacker drive without bothering with the SSWAP utility. Remember, when Stacker creates a drive, it's added as an extra drive letter in your system. SSWAP swaps that drive letter with the original drive (the host), which allows you to continue with your programs on the same drive letter without any problems. That also leaves you with a host drive letter hanging somewhere out in space.
To eliminate the host drive letter and to immediately access your Stacker drive as if it were all by itself, specify the drive letter after the STACKER.COM command in your CONFIG.SYS file. For example, suppose you're stacking two hard drives, C and D, as illustrated in Fig. 5-4. Your CONFIG.SYS file contains the following commands to create those Stacker drives, as well as swap them with their host drive letters:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK D:\STACVOL.DSK
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM D:\STACVOL.DSK
Nothing can be done with drive C; it must always have a host drive available to boot the computer. You can access Stacker drive D instantly, however, by changing the previous lines in CONFIG.SYS to read as follows:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK D:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK
The D:\STACVOL.DSK option is missing from the STACKER.COM device driver. In its place, the drive letter and colon (D:) are specified. This tells Stacker to look for a file named STACVOL.DSK on that drive and make it available for use as drive D. The host drive is never made unavailable, and the SSWAP command isn't necessary. Fig. 5-5 illustrates how this works.
Figure 5-5. Instantly adding a Stacker drive.
For multiple hard drive partitions (as well as RAM drives and removable drives, which are discussed later in this chapter), this is a true blessing. Consider my old system with six drive letters. Here's how that can be Stacker-ized using the previous technique:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK D: E: F: G: H:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK
Drive C still must be SSWAPed; you need a boot disk. However, the other five drives in the system can be created instantly. This eliminates the host drives and the drive letters they would eat up. (On my system, with four additional RAM drives and two network drives, that means a lot.)
The advantage to this trick is that it avoids the host drive letter hassle. There are several disadvantages:
- The same disadvantage holds true for any Stacker drive that still has files left on the host drive. Those files cannot be accessed. To do so, you must re-edit CONFIG.SYS, set up the drive the old way (specify its file name and SSWAP it), then reset your computer.
- Some disk utilities that must work on the host drive cannot be run. (These utilities are covered in chapter 6.)
- You need a host drive available for Windows permanent swap file. The previous technique leaves only drive C available for that swap file. If it's on another drive, say D, then this trick won't work.
Stacking removable disks
Stacker doesn't stack only hard drives. You can stack any disk, which is the major theme of this chapter. One type of disk you might want to consider stacking is the removable disk, which for most of us means floppy disks.
If you want to pick nits, a removable disk is any volume (as the manual puts it) that can be taken out of your PC. Hard drives are fixed and cannot be yanked out (unless your adrenaline is high). So, removable disks are just about anything else in your system aside from the hard drive. This includes floppy disks as well as so-called Bernoulli disks and other removable drives. These are all handled in the same way by Stacker, as removable disks.
The advantage to stacking a floppy disk (or a Bernoulli disk) is that you instantly double its storage. Imagine turning 1.4Mb diskettes into 2.8Mb diskettes without upgrading your hardware. This is the great benefit of stacking floppies. When you do, however, you should reconsider the way you use the floppies. Yes, this means there are drawbacks.
As a big healthy tip, and to avoid a few of the Stacker floppy drawbacks, carefully label your Stacker floppies as such. Put on the label STACKED or some such similar warning. You can use the Stacker floppy only as a Stacker floppy. Otherwise, DOS will see the disk as full and not useful for much.
To use a Stacker floppy, you must first mount it. Mounting refers to the process of telling Stacker that you have a Stacker floppy disk in drive A or B (or a removable disk in another drive). Stacker then tells DOS how to treat the Stacker floppy. This same process (mounting) takes place with your hard drives as well, but it's done automatically.
One majorly cool addition with Stacker version 3 is that the STACKER program to mount a floppy is included on the floppy disk itself. This means you can use a Stacker floppy (or any removable disk) on a machine that doesn't have Stacker installed.
I'll get into the details on mounting Stacker floppies in a few pages. Until then, here are the drawbacks:
You Cannot Create a Stacker Floppy When FASTOPEN Is Installed FASTOPEN is a yucky DOS command anyway. Delete it from your CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT file for good.
You Cannot Use a Stacker Floppy as Your Backup Diskette Stacker floppies can be mounted only one at a time. Because of this, using several of them to cut your backup diskette pile in half doesn't work. Note, however, that you can use a single Stacker floppy to copy files and information that normally would not fit on a standard floppy disk.
Disaster Strikes If You Delete the STACVOL.DSK File! An un-mounted disk is just a very full floppy as far as DOS is concerned. If you re-format the disk or accidentally delete the STACVOL.DSK file, then you've just deleted everything on the Stacker floppy. Be careful. Labeling your Stacker disks really helps to avoid this dilemma.
Deleting any file
named STACVOL.xxx is taboo under
Stacker. On a hard drive doing so could eradicate one of your Stacker hard
drives.
The following sections describe how to stack a floppy disk. Remember that these instructions also apply to Bernoulli disks and other removable volumes.
Creating an empty Stacker floppy
To get the full storage potential from a Stacker floppy, it shouldn't contain any files. If it does, then Stacker creates the Stacker floppy using only the free disk space. Therefore, a 1.4Mb disk with 1Mb free will give you a 2Mb Stacker floppy. That's 800K less than you'd have otherwise (1.4Mb 2 = 2.8Mb). So, your first step to getting the most from a Stacker floppy is to format a new diskette or totally erase a used diskette.
Why erase? You don't really have to; erasing the disk is optional. Stacker will compress any existing files on the disk just as it did with your hard drive. Or, the same as a hard drive, you're given the option of creating a Stacker disk from free space. My advice is to always use the whole floppy. If you don't, Stacker will create what I call a dual-personality disk. Un-mounted, the disk has a few files DOS can see but is otherwise totally full thanks to the STACVOL.DSK file. Mounted, it's a Stacker floppy with all that extra storage.
When a dual-personality floppy disk is mounted, you can't access the files on the DOS side. When the disk is un-mounted, you can't access the files stored on the Stacker floppy. Sigh. This is why you should first format and totally erase the disk.
To format a new disk or completely erase a used disk, type in the following DOS command:
C:\> FORMAT A: /U
Insert a diskette of the highest capacity for drive A. Don't skimp here. Also, if you're using an old disk, make sure it doesn't contain files you want to keep. (If so, use another disk.) Press Enter when everything's kosher and follow the directions on your screen.
To create the Stacker floppy, use Stacker's CREATE command (called SCREATE with older versions of Stacker). First, log to your STACKER subdirectory. For example:
C:\> CD \STACKER
Then, type the CREATE command, followed by the letter of the drive containing the floppy (or removable disk) you want to stack. (The CREATE command has other options as well, which are elaborated upon in chapter 9.) For example, to stack the freshly formatted diskette in drive A, you'd type:
C:\STACKER> CREATE A:
Making sure the diskette is in drive A, press Enter. You'll see a box pop up in the center of your screen. In the box, a few cryptic lines of text will appear as CREATE incants the spell to make a Stacker floppy. The process is very similar to the steps taken to Stack a hard drive in earlier chapters, though CREATE converts the entire disk all at once.
When the operation has completed, you'll see:
Stacker drive created successfully.
Remove the disk from the drive at this point and mark its label STACKED or whatever you feel is appropriate to identify the disk as a Stacker floppy.
You can't use the Stacker floppy until it's been mounted (which is covered in the section ``Mounting a removable Stacker disk''). For now, you can look at the disk using the DIR command. Type in the following:
C:\STACKER> DIR A: /A
The /A switch directs the DIR command to display all the files on the disk in drive A. You'll see something like the following:
Volume in drive A has no label
Volume Serial Number is 3551-11F7
Directory of A:\
STACVOL DSK 1455104 01-29-93 11:03a
README STC 104 01-29-93 11:03a
2 file(s) 1455208 bytes
2048 bytes free
There are two files and 100% of the disk space is used. (Okay, 2K still is free, which is too full for anything I use.) The STACVOL.DSK file is the Stacker drive, the same as with a hard drive. It uses all the disk space. The STACKER.DRV file is visible. It's a text file you can view using the TYPE command:
C:\STACKER> TYPE A:\README.STC
This is a Stacker compressed disk.
Type "STACKER d:", where "d" is the drive letter of this disk.
The README file contains the instructions for mounting the removable Stacker disk. To complete the job, skip ahead to the section, ``Mounting a removable Stacker disk.''
Stacking a full or partially full floppy
Suppose your floppy disk has files on it and you want to keep those files on the Stacker floppy. This works exactly like stacking a hard disk with all its data. Unlike creating a Stacker floppy with the CREATE command, however, you must use Stacker's SETUP program to stack a floppy with all its files.
If you use CREATE on
a floppy disk with files on it, a Stacker disk is created using free
space. This makes one of those dual-personality diskettes I warned you about earlier.
Start the stacking process by sticking the disk you want to stack into your floppy drive. Next, log to the \STACKER directory on your hard disk and type SETUP at the DOS prompt:
C:\STACKER> SETUP
After pressing Enter, you'll be in the same, friendly SETUP program you've used before. To stack a floppy, or removable, disk, follow these steps:
1. Do not restart to disable your memory-resident (TSR) programs; press D.
2. Select drive A or B, the one that contains the floppy disk you want to Stack. Press C to continue.
3. The next screen allows you to create an empty Stacker drive or stack the entire disk. You want to Stack the entire disk, select Entire Drive.
If you elect to
create an empty Stacker drive on a floppy, leave enough space for files to be
copied there when the disk is un-mounted.
This allows the floppy to be used normally and with Stacker.
4. A summary screen describes the disk's current used/free space situation. Nod your head silently in agreement, then select the Stack button to proceed.
5. Magic! Voodoo!
6. Norton's Speed Disk will be run to optimize the storage space on your floppy disk. This will take a few seconds, but fortunately the display is fun to look at.
7. Finally, you'll see the graphical results screen. Instantly, a partially empty 1.4M floppy turns into a half-empty 2.8M model. Impressive. You can select Restart to reboot your PC, or choose Stack Another to create another Stacker floppy. (You need to reset since SETUP has modified your CONFIG.SYS file to allow the Stacker floppy to be mounted; more on this in a paragraph.)
Remove the Stacker
floppy from the drive before you restart!
The floppy disk now has been stacked, just as a hard drive would be. You can use the DIR command to look at the Stacker floppy, but you'll see only a few files: STACKER.DRV, a text file (see the previous section); maybe a STACKER.LOG file listing files copied or held between the DOS disk and the Stacker floppy; plus any files that weren't stacked. Just like a hard drive, Stacker will refuse to copy some important files. If they're on the floppy drive you're stacking, then they won't be copied.
Mounting a removable Stacker disk
To use a removable disk under Stacker, you must first mount it. That's the process of letting Stacker know about the Stacker drive, which in turn lets DOS know about it.
If you've used the SETUP program to create your Stacker floppy, then CONFIG.SYS has already been modified and made aware of the removable Stacker drive. You may notice the command that loads Stacker in CONFIG.SYS contains an extra option:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK A:
The A: at the end of the line tells Stacker to watch out for a Stacker volume in drive A. Normal, un-Stacked disks will continue to be read, but stick a Stacker floppy into the drive and Stacker will automatically mount it for use. This is the automatic way of mounting a Stacker drive. If you plan on using Stacker floppies in drive A all the time, make the above modification to CONFIG.SYS, save it to disk, then restart your computer.
To manually mount a Stacker floppy you use the STACKER program. It's followed by a a drive letter and colon, which forces Stacker to recognize the drive as a Stacker drive. Here is the format:
STACKER d:
Above, d: would be drive A or B, whichever drive contains the Stacker floppy (or a higher drive letter for another type of removable drive). If you wanted to mount a Stacker floppy on drive A, you would type STACKER A: at the command prompt. Something like Fig. 5-6 would then be displayed on your screen. That tells you that the Stacker floppy has been successfully mounted and is now ready for use, just like any other floppy drive.
Figure 5-6. Stacker mounts a Stacker floppy.
Unlike the Stacker
hard drive, a Stacker floppy does not have a host floppy. There's only one
disk. Mounted it's a Stacker floppy, un-mounted it's a very full DOS disk.
Unlike previous versions of Stacker, you can freely swap regular floppies and Stacker floppies without having to continually mount your floppy drive. This means you can switch between a Stacker floppy and a standard floppy without any hassles. Later sections in this chapter describe hot to un-mount removable disks, as well as mounting Stacker floppies on alien PCs.
Reserving drive letters for removable disks
Stacker is pretty fair when it comes to granting you access to a removable Stacker disk. If you don't put the floppy drive letter on the STACKER.COM command line in CONFIG.SYS, then you can still use the STACKER A: command to mount your Stacker floppy. Stacker isn't that gracious when it comes to additional removable drives.
In order to accommodate several removable Stacker drives you must reserve a drive letter for them. This makes Stacker aware that you have removable Stacker disks. To do so you don't need to have the drive letters in mind. Instead, you add an @ (asterisk) symbol to the line that loads Stacker in CONFIG.SYS. The @ can go anywhere, though if you put it after any STACVOL.xxx files and drive letters, the reserved letters won't affect any existing Stacker drives. For example:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK @
Above, the @ symbol added to the DEVICE command that loads Stacker allows for one removable Stacker disk in that system. If you want more removable drives, you need two @ signs:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK @ @
You'll be made aware of the drive reservations when Stacker boots. Something along the lines of Fig. 5-7 will be displayed. Note how the two asterisks reserve drives E and F for use as possible removable Stacker drives. Drive D is used for the Stacker drive C.
Figure 5-7. Stacker reserves two drive letters for removable Stacker drives.
If you're using extra removable disks, aside from drives A and B, you'll need to add the @ symbols to the command that loads Stacker in CONFIG.SYS. Save the changes to CONFIG.SYS to disk when you're done, and exit back to the command prompt. Reset your PC, then you can mount your removable Stacker disk(s).
Stacker has two
symbols to reserve drive letters: @ and *. @ reserves removable Stacker drive letters. The * is used to reserve drive letters
for STACVOL.xxx files that may be
mounted later on your hard drive.
If you don't plan on mounting any of these, only removable drives or
Stacker floppies, then only specify the @ signs.
Un-mounting a removable Stacker disk
Just as you can mount a disk using the STACKER command, you also can un-mount a disk. Normally, this isn't needed, because Stacker recognizes both Stacker and non-Stacker disks and you can switch between them automatically. However, if you need to manually un-mount it, for example to access any uncompressed files still hugging to the disk, use STACKER as follows:
C:\STACKER> STACKER -A:
The minus sign in front of the drive letter is what does the magic. That un-mounts the Stacker drive, making it back into a DOS disk. You'll need to use the STACKER command again to re-mount any Stacker floppies since Stacker will no longer be on the watch for them after the above command.
Mounting a removable Stacker disk on a non-Stacker machine
Suppose you want to show off a Stacker floppy to a friend, but he's miles from the nearest Egghead and hasn't heard about mail-order software so he doesn't have Stacker. Relax. You can instantly mount your removable Stacker disk using the handy STACKER utility the SETUP program put on the disk for you. This is called Stacker Anywhere, and it means you have no limitations on using your Stacker floppies.
If you've used the
CREATE command to make your Stacker floppy, then the handy "portable"
STACKER program isn't included.
Only removable Stacker disks created with the SETUP program have this
handy tool.
To mount the Stacker disk, insert it into drive A (or whichever removable drive is handy) and log to that drive:
C:\> A:
Once you're "on" drive A, run the STACKER program on the disk:
A:\> STACKER
This runs Stacker Anywhere, a special version of Stacker that allows you to access programs on a removable Stacker drive without the need to have Stacker handy. What you'll see on your screen will look similar to Fig. 5-8. Note that Stacker runs as a memory-resident program when you do this. It occupies some 45K of conventional memory.
Figure 5-8. Stacker "Anywhere" mounts a Stacker floppy on another PC
You can use the portable Stacker drive as long as it's mounted. To un-mount the drive, type EXIT at the command prompt:
A:\> EXIT
Stacker Anywhere responds with a message, informing you that the Stacker drive has been un-mounted.
Though Stacker is Windows-friendly, you cannot use Stacker Anywhere on a Stacker floppy to mount it under Windows. You'll need to exit Windows, then mount the floppy, then restart Windows.
Stacking RAM drives
Stacking a RAM drive is too easy and the benefits are enormous. Instantly, you can double the size of your RAM drives using Stacker's SCREATE.SYS device driver. There's no additional memory overhead involved and no complicated drive swapping involved.
Doubling RAM drive size with SCREATE.SYS
RAM drives are created using a device driver, such as the RAMDrive software that comes with DOS and Windows. The device driver is loaded using a line in CONFIG.SYS. For example:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 1024 /E
Some versions of DOS
may call their RAM drive software VDISK.SYS. In MS-DOS it's RAMDRIVE.SYS. There is really no difference between the two drivers, other
than the names.
This command creates a 1Mb RAM drive in extended memory. If you have only drive C in your system, then the RAM drive is created as drive D. Using Stacker, you can double the size of your RAM drive D to 2Mb, without adding any extra RAM to your PC or subtracting more RAM from your total. All you need to do is follow the RAMDRIVE.SYS command with an SCREATE.SYS command, plus the letter of the RAM drive:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 1024 /E
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SCREATE.SYS D:
These commands create a 1Mb RAM drive on drive D. The SCREATE.SYS command then stacks that drive, doubling its size. (Technically speaking, SCREATE.SYS builds the STACVOL.xxx file; the Stacker RAM drive still needs to be mounted.)
Don't bother using
the DEVICEHIGH command with SCREATE.SYS to load it high; SCREATE.SYS releases
the memory it uses after it runs.
After the Stacker RAM drive is created using SCREATE.SYS, the STACKER.COM device driver must be modified to automatically mount the Stacker RAM drive. This is done by sticking the RAM drive's letter at the end of the line that loads STACKER.COM.
For example, if you were adding Stacker RAM drive D, you would add the D: as follows:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK D:
This command runs the STACKER device driver and creates a Stacker drive using the STACVOL.DSK file on drive C. The D: at the end of the command mounts Stacker drive D, the Stacker RAM drive.
You must save all these changes to your CONFIG.SYS file, exit to DOS, then reset your computer for the doubled-up RAM drive to have effect.
Doubling a RAM drive from the command prompt
You can create on-the-fly Stacker RAM drives at the command prompt if you like. This is done by using two Stacker commands:
C:\STACKER> CREATE D:
C:\STACKER> STACKER D:
Above, it's assumed that drive D is a RAM drive in your system. The first command, CREATE, builds the Stacker RAM drive, just as it's used to create Stacker floppy disks (though it works lightning fast on the RAM disk). The second command, STACKER, mounts the Stacker RAM drive.
There's really no need to use these commands at the DOS prompt (unless you suddenly find you need more RAM drive space and don't want to reset). If you always plan on having a Stacker RAM drive, consider making the modifications to CONFIG.SYS as discussed in the previous section.
Doubling more than one RAM drive
If you have more than one RAM drive in your system, you can double the size of each of them. For example:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 1024 /E
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 512 /E
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 720 /E
These commands create three RAM drives: E at 1Mb, F at 512K, and G at 720K. To give yourself three RAM drives at 2Mb, 1Mb, and 1.4Mb of storage, modify CONFIG.SYS as follows:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 1024 /E
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SCREATE.SYS E:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 512 /E
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SCREATE.SYS F:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 720 /E
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SCREATE.SYS G:
Also, mount the RAM drives by adding their letters to the Stacker device driver as follows:
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM /B=280 C:\STACVOL.DSK E: F: G:
Save the changes to CONFIG.SYS, then reboot for everything to take effect. Once that's done, you'll have more than 2Mb of RAM drive storage available without cutting into your overall memory total.
Bonus Stacker RAM drive tip
You can use SCREATE to ``create'' more memory on your PC. Start by cutting the size of your RAM drives in half. For example, if you're working with a 2Mb RAM drive, edit CONFIG.SYS so that only a 1Mb RAM drive is created. Then, use SCREATE to double the storage back up to 2Mb:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 1024 /E
DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SCREATE.SYS D:
After this change has been made, CONFIG.SYS saved, and the system rebooted, you still will have your 2Mb RAM drive. However, you also will get back 1Mb of memory you didn't have before. Because Stacker doubles the size of the RAM drive, you can use the extra memory not used by the RAM drive to boost the performance of other programs, such as Windows, 1-2-3 release 3, or other memory-intensive applications. Neat, eh?
Review
This chapter is about creating additional Stacker drives on your system. Beyond your first Stacker drive, which was created in chapter 3, you can create more Stacker hard drives, Stacker floppies and other removable drives, as well as Stacker RAM drives.
Additional Stacker drives are created using the SETUP or CREATE program. CREATE is good for creating empty Stacker drives, such as floppy drives. SETUP is required when you're stacking an existing drive with all its data.
Removable Stacker drives must be mounted. This is done automatically for floppy drives, or you can specify A: or B: at the end of the command that loads STACKER.COM in CONFIG.SYS.
Some removable drives may require an * (asterisk) symbol after the STACKER.COM device driver to reserve a drive letter for that drive. Further, the STACKER utility must be run at the DOS prompt, followed by the letter of the Stacker drive to mount the drive:
STACKER F:
To un-mount a removable Stacker drive, precede the drive letter with a minus sign, as in:
STACKER -F:
Stacker RAM drives are a bonus all users can enjoy. Simply follow the command that creates the RAM drive with the SCREATE.SYS command. Stacker handles the rest.