Duplication Speed

The following table gives you an indication of the relative speed of various copying combinations. (Use [F5] to zoom the help window).

Note: These speeds does not include the disk change time.

Duplication Speed for Unformatted Disks
(With a full byte-per-byte compare)

Drive Type	Disk Format	Disks/Hour
		Regular Controller	Allegro I Controller	Allegro II Controller
Regular Speed Drive, 1X	1.44Mb	32	45	54
	1.2Mb	38	54	65
	720K	32	45	54
	360K	64	90	108
Double Speed Drive, 2X	1.44Mb	64	90	105
	1.2Mb	76	108	124
	720K	64	90	105
	360K	128	180	210
Quad Speed Drive, 2XSDS 600 RPM	1.44Mb	112	150	200
	1.2Mb	135	180	240
	720K	112	150	200
	360K	225	300	400
Quad Speed Drive 2XSDS 720 RPM	1.44Mb	N/A	N/A	230
1200 RPM Drive (4XSDS) using a 486 CPU	1.44Mb	N/A	N/A	360

Notes:

• The times listed assume a 386 processor is used, except for 1200 RPM drives, which require a 486 or better.

• In order to achieve maximum duplication speed on some computers DiskDupe should be run from Dos (rather than Windows) and the HIMEM.SYS memory manager should be used instead of EMM386 or QEMM. A sample CONFIG.SYS would look like this:

  FILES=30
  BUFFERS=30
  DEVICE=C:\Dos\HIMEM.SYS
  Dos=HIGH

• The Allegro controllers from Micro System Designs, Inc., format and write concurrently, so for full diskettes there is no time penalty for using unformatted disks. The copy quality is better than with regular controllers because the data is written over fresh media rather than on top of format data.

• If your disks are not completely full, duplicating times will be faster than this with normal controllers. With the Allegro controllers there is no speed difference between copying a full disk and an empty disk since the data and the format are written in the same pass.

• Some 1.4Mb drives steps, or move from track-to-track, fairly slowly and are not able to match these times.