Capt. Zyla wrote:
>
> What is the wisdom these days in setting up a new hard drives? Should one
> use a disk manager and get the disk partition and formatted real quick or
> use the old dos fdisk and format? Assuming that your bios can handle the
> larger capacity hard drives.

First of all, relatively, speaking, partitioning and formatting don't
take THAT long, and if you've done it a couple of times or have a clear
enough procedure, it's not difficult.  If your BIOS can handle the full
capacity of the drive I would definitely NOT use any form of disk
overlay software, but you can use programs like Disk Manager to do the
partitioning and formatting without installing the overlay if you want.

If your BIOS can't handle the full capacity of the drive, my choice is
to either upgrade the drive controller or install a HD BIOS card before
I would resort to using a disk overlay program.  More reliable, not THAT
much more expensive.  I have used them, and in MOST cases they will work
okay, if slightly slower, but to me, my piece of mind and data are worth
choosing another alternative.  If you have a particularly complicated
software setup, e.g. drive compression, lots of TSR's, etc., you're
increasing the risk factor.  I'm speaking of a DOS/Windows setup here.
I don't know about Win95 for sure, but personally, I wouldn't feel
comfortable.  The decision is ultimately yours.

> Is there any advantage in *NOT* using a disk manager?
...

1. No memory lost to the overlay.
2. No speed/performance hit.
3. No additional layer or element to cause problems or check if problems
arise.
4. MAY cause problems or have conflicts with other software you may
install.

Good luck in any case.

--
Larry Atlow                          Internet:[log in to unmask]
Microcomputer Analyst                Phonenet: (601) 264-9639