On Tue, 16 Mar 1999 12:49:00 GMT, Claire Watson wrote:

>Does anyone have any valid reason why simply clearing a drive used
>for video by just deleting *all* the files is not just as good?
>
>This is all I do, I never defrag or reformat my video drive.
>
>The way I see it is that when you delete, only the directory entry
>is removed from the drive, not the file. However, a full hard drive
>with no directory entries is like an empty drive as regarding new
>files going on it in a nice unfragmented order.
>
>Right or wrong?

Right - this works fine. There is no need to reformat
the drive to clear it, and simply deleting all the files
on the drive is probably faster, too... As for using a
single drive partitioned into two parts (for programs
and mini-DV video files), this works well. Having
at least one additional drive helps if one wants to
remove only some video files from a drive (the remaining
files can be moved to the other drive to clean up the
first drive, or the additional drive can be used as the
target drive for edited files, saving you from having to
read files from and write a file to the same drive).
Actually, it is useful to have three drives in addition
to the program drive, for simplifying file and drive
management... (I'm building another Spark-based computer
now, with three 16-gig IBM UDMA drives - the first is
partitioned into a 3-gig section for programs, with
the rest able to hold an hour's worth of mini-DV files.)