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I sent this email on 7/03 at 5am PT. I am not sure if it went through
because I never received my return copy from the MetaStock ListServer.
Therefore, I am resending it. If you already have received a copy I
apologize for inconvenience. Daniel.
StockWiz support,
thank you for your response. The first disk compression program I purchased
was Stacker 4.0 3 years ago. At the time it was state of the art and worked
with DOS and Windows 3.1. When I upgraded to Windows 95 in January I had to
research this subject and found the state of the art today is DriveSpace 3.
DriveSpace 3 is included in the MicroSoft Plus! package ($50). DriveSpace 3
is the only 32 bit, Pentium-optimized, Windows 95 program on the market. It
is 20% faster than the DriveSpace included free in Windows 95. DriveSpace 3
also allows you to create Compressed Volume Files (CVF's) up to 2 GB's versus
only a puny 512 MB for DriveSpace. I do not use Windows 3.1 anymore but I
never had any problems with Stacker 4.0. I have not any problems with
DriveSpace 3. With my Cyrix P150 I have not noticed any speed reduction
attributable to DS3. The CPU's made today are at least 20% faster.
A sector is always 512 bytes. A common mistake people make is they mistake
clusters for sectors. The larger the clusters, the more sectors per cluster.
In uncompressed hard drives, the size of the clusters vary with the size of
the drive. This is because the number of clusters DOS and Windows 95 can
allocate is 64K. After rereading the drive table in my Partition Magic
manual, I can tell you 24K is not a valid cluster size.
Drive Size MB Cluster size Ave. wasted space
128 - 255 4KB 4%
256 - 511 8KB 10%
512 - 1,023 16KB 25%
1,024 - 2,047 32KB 40%
2,048 - 4,096 64KB 50%
Most people buy drives larger than 1 GB and are unknowingly wasting 40% of
their disk space. The only way you can reduce this waste is to make the
drive's partitions smaller than 512 MB. DS3 stores data in 32K blocks
however data can be stored in nonsequential sectors. This means a file can
be broken up, if necessary, into different sectors on the drive and produces
very little waste. With DS3 I can create any size partitions I want with
multiple DS3 CVF's up to 2 GB in size. There is no waste because the data is
stored inside the CVF's. This not only stops the above waste but also
compresses the data, a twofold advantage.
I agree MetaStock 6 has a very inefficient way of storing data. Even buggy
Window on Wall Street Pro v5 is better and faster. However, in my humble
opinion, MetaStock 6 is the best end-of-day technical analysis program for
under $1000. Right now, I am leaning towards using Quote.Com. While I have
to do everything manually using the Equis DownLoader for ASCII files, I would
only have one database and they only cost $10/mo. I will look over your
product and data service again before I decide what to buy. If necessary, I
will replace my 1.6 GB drive with a larger one. By the way, this 1.6 GB is
EIGHT TIMES larger than the drive I had for Windows 3.1.
Daniel.
In a message dated 97-07-02 17:29:05 EDT, you write:
<< t is not that complicated when you really think about it. Using
compression on your hard disk would not help much. The problem
is that every file takes at least 24K (even if the size is 1 byte).
Compression software cuts the sector size down to 12K. This still
wastes a lot of space when you have 12,000 files. This is why we
have one database and not 12,000 files. Metastock started out as
a charting program and not a screening program. Efficient storage
was not a priority for them. We simply refuse to lower our standards
so we can meet theirs. This is why you need to have two databases.
We also make it easy to apply split factors from files we supply.
So, when you export to Metastock files the data are already adjusted.
We will be releasing soon our Windows 95 version that makes things
even easier. Stay tuned...
StockWiz support
At 08:19 PM 7/1/97 -0400, you wrote:
>I will be buying the Investor's Reference Library CD-ROM stock price
database
>which uses the old 256 files per directory format. It has 5 years of data.
> The new MetaStock v6 directory format is not an issue here.
>
>I have MetaStock v6. Every single information provider on the Net makes
you
>maintain their database IN ADDITION TO METASTOCK'S. I have a 1.6 GB drive
>with Microsoft's DriveSpace 3 compression software. I thought I had plenty
>of room. Now I find I will barely be able to squeeze all the data I want
>because of this duplication. I don't need a second database! The CD-ROM I
>get with MetaStock has 5 years of data. I can get others with even more.
> Why would I need a second and smaller 2 mos database maintained daily?
>
>Also, many stock price info providers make you MANUALLY go in and change
>stock splits and ticker name changes. If I maintained all US stocks, I
would
>have to change 15 per day! Instead of wasting time and effort creating a
>technical analysis program, stock price info providers should concentrate
on
>information and conversion to other technical analysis program databases
>only. You can now get a cheap TA program for $50. These TA programs are
>Windows 95 based and always better than the programs supplied by info
>providers. They specialize in this field. The only way I can have
>everything done automatically is if I use MetaStock's Reuters service.
They
>want $35/month. There is no way I am going to pay $35/month for just US
>Stocks end-of-day!
>
>Why is this so complicated???!!
>>
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