Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 02:31:43 -0800
To: Eric Prentice
From: Chad Magendanz
Subject: Re: Mac Tip of the Week & ShrinkWrap
Hi Eric!
>I'm going to he talking about disk images next week in the MacTip of the
>week and of course that must include a discussion about ShrinkWrap.
>Currently I get over a thousand hits a week. I'm wondering if you could
>provide some info that ShrinkWrap users might appreciate besides what is in
>the Read Me. I'm wondering what plans you might have for the future and if
>there are any thoughts you have about little known cool stuff about
>ShrinkWrap.
Sure! Let me first start out with some news. I'm proud to announce that
Aladdin Systems, Inc., developer of the worldwide Macintosh compression and
installation standards, StuffIt and StuffIt InstallerMaker, has just
recently acquired ShrinkWrap. Aladdin will continue to work closely with
me and together we will release new versions of ShrinkWrap in early 1997. A
press release will follow later this week with more details.
Version 2.1 was just released to mark the occasion. You can download it
right now from the ShrinkWrap Web site at:
<http://www.halcyon.com/shrinkwrap/>
or via FTP at the following URL:
<ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/users/chad/release/SW-2.1.hqx>
This version rolls in a bunch of bug fixes and performance tweaks that I've
been working on over the summer. It will be the last major update prior to
release as an Aladdin product.
As for little known cool stuff about ShrinkWrap, I think that very few
people are aware that ShrinkWrap will work with any size volumes, not just
floppies. So you can create and mount a disk image just as you would
create a RAM disk or a partition on your hard drive, but you can do it
dynamically. There's no need to restart for the change to take effect and
when you're done, just drag it to the trash and your Mac is restored to its
original state.
So for example, if you have a collection of Syquest cartidges that you want
to archive on a Jaz drive. You can just drag the Syquest cartidges onto
ShrinkWrap and store their images on the Jaz cartridge as self-mounting
image files. Later, when you want to access the orignal contents of the
Syquests, just double-click on the image file and volume will be mounted on
the desktop as a partition just like it originally existed on the Syquest.
Another cool fact is that you can create space and improve the performance
of your hard drive by using ShrinkWrap disk images as archives,
particularly if you have a large hard drive. For example, if you have a
collection of 1000 icons that you're storing on a 4GB hard drive, these
files will consume 128MB. The same files stored in a ShrinkWrap disk image
will take only 2.5MB. This is because the max number of blocks an HFS
drive is 32768, which means that each block for a 4GB drive must be 128K.
If the file your storing is only 2.5K (which is the case for a custom icon)
then it still takes a 128K to store, wasting 98% of the space.
However, if you put these files into a folder and drag them onto
ShrinkWrap, it will create a disk image file to fit the contents of the
folder, mount it on the desktop, then copy the files from the folder to the
new volume. However, because the new volume will only be 2.5MB large, its
allocation block size is only .5K, which means that the 1000 2.5K files fit
in exactly 2.5MB and there is no wasted space. Additionally, because the
1000 custom icons aren't added to the desktop database of your hard drive,
the Finder's performance will improve noticeably.
>Needless to say I think shrinkwrap is great and can't imagine life without it!
Thanks!
Chad
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chad Magendanz
Author of ShrinkWrap and ImageMaster AOL/MSN: Magendanz
http://www.halcyon.com/shrinkwrap/
MacTips || Feedback || MacTips Archive || The Macintosh Guy