Installing WWindows 98 will probably take up more space on your hard drive than Windows 95 did. For those of us who are on the edge already, this is a major increase. Clark estimated conservatively that most hard drives will see increases up to 20 to 30 percent. Depending on how many small files you have on your hard drive, this could dramatically increase your available space. Instead of the 32k cluster, or 16k, or 8k, Windows 98 uses a 4k disk cluster no matter what size the partition.
Well Windows 98 is going to help create some extra space on our hard drive when it converts our FAT16 hard drives to FAT32. If you do not have your disk partitioned properly, even a 1 byte file can take up one of these 32k disk clusters. It seems unbeknownst to many of us, that each file no matter how small can take up a 32k disk cluster space. For the most part those of us who are using Windows 95 and earlier Windows versions have our hard drives formatted using FAT16. This will reduce the number and length of disk seeks that the hard drive makes thus reducing wear on the hard drive.Īnother significant improvement (in my mind) deals with how Windows 98 converts the hard drive from FAT16 to FAT32. Defrag then puts the most used programs at the edge of the hard for faster access when loading these programs. Then during defrag the files from these programs are first put together. The Windows 98 defrag uses disk access pattern information which it gets from a file that TaskMon logs during program loads. With Windows 95, the defrag program (I am putting this is generic user terms, so that I and others can understand what I am saying) moved the fragmented files to where there were gaps and just filled in the spaces, basically not caring where it put them. One significant area of improvement deals with the defrag program, or I should say the changes that they made to the defrag program. We were especially anticipating this visit as we knew that Clark would be showing us Windows 98 even before they release it. It is always an entertaining meeting when Microsoft comes to town as their speakers always do an excellent job. The Elkhart PC Users group wants to thank Clark Miller from Microsoft for being with us at this past meeting. Now on the horizon is another Windows product that on the outside does not look that much different from Windows 95, but on the inside has many new advances that make the user seriously think of upgrading to Windows 98. It is hard to believe that is has been almost three years since Windows 95 saved us from the dreaded GPF’s of Windows 3.x. May Review with Microsoft by Paul Frushour, EPCUG Member Table of Contents May Review with Microsoft June 1998 - Vol 14 - Issue 6 Newsletter - Internet Edition
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