Compression programs

[SCOT GILES]

For the past week or so I've been experimenting with a program called
SUPERSTOR. It is a device driver that loads as part of your CONFIG.SYS
files. Thereafter you can create partitions on your disk (or entire
disks, including floppies) that become "compression areas." You
"mount" these with a little utility, and DOS recognizes the partition
as another logical drive. You can do anything--create directories,
etc.--that you can on any other sort of drive. What happens however is
that anything you do while on a SUPERSTOR drive is compressed about 2
to 1. My Toshiba has a 2.4M ramdisk. I created a 2.2M compressed
partition on the ramdisk. When I mount it, DOS recognizes it as drive
E:, and I've got 4.4M of usable space. There is no noticable slowdown
when using the compressed drive.
   There are a few problems:
   -On the Toshibas with DOS in ROM, you cannot make compressed
floppies until the next upgrade comes out. It is due in August.
   -The "available space" figures you get with CHKDSK or with the
utility program that comes with SUPERSTOR are estimates. If what you
try to put on the disk compresses on a 2 to 1 ratio, you will get
exactly the storage the utilities predict. If it compresses more, you
will do better than the utilities say. If it is relatively
uncompressable (like an EXE files already compressed with PKLITE), you
will do worse than the prediction
  Still, as *everything* gets compressed, you do get
considerable savings. I have essentially doubled my storage using the
program.