Hard Disk ToolKitª v2.0.5 Release Notes
Copyright ©1991-1997 FWB Software, LLC
1/3/97


Additional features/notes of Hard Disk ToolKit not mentioned in the  User Guide.
===================================================================

Note: IDE is also referred to as ATA.


Hard Disk ToolKitª Installer

¥ The Installer application installs the Hard Disk ToolKit applications, control panels, and system extensions. It will not install hard disk drivers.

¥ The Installer cannot install the FWB Tools Extension, the FWB IDE Extension, or the FWB TurboBoot Extension if the startup volume is locked (files cannot be added to the volume) or if you start up from a CD-ROM. Do not choose the Easy Install option to install RAID ToolKit if your startup volume is locked. If using Custom Install, do not select the FWB Tools Extension, the FWB IDE Extension, or either of the FWB Tool Manager Pro options if your startup volume is locked.

¥ Before the Installer installs any of Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.5Õs applications and extensions, the old 1.x extensions, preferences, and control panel items will be moved into a folder called Disabled FWB Items. This folder will reside in the System Folder of the startup drive.

¥ If you are upgrading from Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0 to 2.0.5, the Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0 folder will not be affected by the Installer, but the extensions in the Extensions folder in the System folder will be replaced with new ones. We suggest you delete your Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0 folder after copying any of your data files you wish to save to the "Hard Disk ToolKitª 2" folder.

¥ When you install FWB Toolsª (either by Easy Install or Custom Install), any copies of FWB Tools¥PEª (from Hard Disk ToolKit¥PEª 2.x) will be removed.


Where have the FWB (Hammer) Logos Gone?

We've made minor changes to the interface in this version to reflect FWB SoftwareÕs new logo and corporate identity. Specifically, we've updated all instances of the "crossed hammer" icon with the new FWB Software, LLC logo.


Hard Disk ToolKitª

¥ Hard Disk ToolKitª, the FWB Crisis Toolª, FWB Mounterª, and FWB IDE Extensionª explicitly support IDE drives. The other components of Hard Disk ToolKitª do not.

¥ If you define custom settings for your disk driver (such as blind transfers or verification after writes), when you update to the latest FWB driver, the settings are reset to the default for that drive. This ensures the highest degree of safety for all supported drives, which use the thoroughly tested optimal settings contained in the Device Data and Device Data ATA files. Please note the settings before updating the driver and reset them to your custom settings after updating the driver.

¥ If it appears that you have plenty of free space on your disk, but installing or updating a driver fails, defragment your disk and try the operation again. If this fails, you may need to back up your data and reinitialize your disk to install the latest FWB driver. Also see the next item.

¥ Norton Filesaver makes an invisible file near the end of the partition. If there is data near the end of the HFS partition, we cannot shrink it, which may be necessary for driver updating. Here are the steps to work around this problem:

1.  Turn off Norton Filesaver at minimum for the volume whose driver you are updating.
2.  Run a disk optimizer, like Norton Speed Disk or TurboDisk (part of FWB Turbo ToolKitª).
3.  In your disk optimizer, turn on the option to erase unused space.
4.  Optimize the disk.
5.  Try to update the driver with Hard Disk ToolKitª again.

The above steps usually work. A file was probably in the way.

¥ If you are using System 7.5.2 or later and a volume fails to initialize, please note that AppleÕs disk initialization routine has recently changed. Although it's faster, it requires more free memory to perform the operation under System 7.5.2 or later. If an attempt to initialize fails, try again after freeing up more RAM by quitting all applications and restarting Hard Disk ToolKitª, or by restarting the system with extensions off (by holding down the Shift key during startup).

¥ In BenchTest, the largest transfer size accepted is 65,535KB (64 MB).

¥ When performing write-enabled media scanning, Hard Disk ToolKitª prevents the user from switching to other applications. This is to minimize the risk of data loss should a disk error occur during a write operation.

¥ If a CD-ROM changer or jukebox is connected to the system when Hard Disk ToolKitª is launched, the main window may take longer to appear. If there are CDs loaded in the changer or jukebox, the startup screen may remain displayed for up to 15 minutes while Hard Disk ToolKitª scans for detailed information on all attached SCSI LUNs. With fewer CDs loaded in the changer or jukebox, the Hard Disk ToolKitª main display window may appear sooner.

¥ Hard Disk ToolKitª will install an IDE driver and a SCSI driver on all removable media and all IDE drives. Dual drivers allow you to interchange removable media between IDE and SCSI removable drives and to use IDE-configured laptops in SCSI Disk Mode.

NOTE: If you use a Macintosh PowerBook with an IDE drive (such as a Macintosh PowerBook 190 or 5300), and you partition the drive into multiple volumes, then the Macintosh PowerBook cannot be put in SCSI disk mode when using the Hard Disk ToolKitª driver. There is no problem if the drive contains just a single volume.

¥ Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.1 can create custom partitions for use with MkLinuxª. Format the drive. When the Create Volumes dialog appears click "Cancel". Manually create the following partitions:

    Volume Type: Apple_HFS, Name: "MacOS HFS Boot partition" - At least 50 MB
    Volume Type: Scratch, Name: "root", Type: "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" - At least 100 MB
    Volume Type: Scratch, Name: "usr", Type: "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" - At least 200 MB
    Volume Type: Scratch, Name: "swap", Type: "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" - 64 MB

¥ A generic document icon may appear on your Desktop instead of the colorful disk icon after successful autoinitialization of your device. This is a problem seen on early System 7 versions and is fixed on System 7.5.3 and later. Please see "How to Use Cool FWB Icons" for step-by-step instructions on how to replace the generic document icon with one of our colorful Desktop icons. (This file is not available in the Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.1 Update -- please see your Macintosh User Guide instead.)

¥ If you are using a Power Macintosh without the ObjectSupportLib file installed, drag-and-drop is not supported.

¥ If QuickHelpª refuses to launch, it may either not have enough free memory to launch (quit unnecessary applications or activate Virtual Memory and restart your system) or not be installed (reinstall QuickHelpª from the installation disks).

¥ The password dialog box will still come up at boot time on a secured volume (password only or encrypted) even if its automount option is disabled. Hit "Enter" to continue without mounting the volume.

IDE Driver

¥ The installed IDE driver is configured automatically for optimum performance for a given IDE hard drive. However, the IDE driver will be configured conservatively to work reliably on unsupported IDE hard drives. You can manually tune the IDE driver by using the "Configure Driver" feature in Hard Disk ToolKitª; you can greatly improve IDE drive performance by enabling the write cache and by modifying the R/W Multiple and PIO or DMA settings. The following are hints for improved IDE drive performance:
 1) Enable the write cache.
 2) "R/W"- in general, larger "R/W" values improve drive performance.
 3) "PIO/DMA" - in general, larger PIO or DMA values result in better performance.
 4) PIO vs. DMA - if you know you have Apple's latest ATA Manager that supports DMA, opting for the "DMA" setting results in more efficient IO and greater data throughput. At the time of this release, only the ATA Manager version shipped with PowerMac 5400 supported this capability.

Beware that some drives do not behave correctly at some of the more sophisticated settings, so back up your data before experimenting.

¥ When setting Read/Write Multiple in the "Driver Configure" dialog for ATA devices it is important to test the performance of various settings to achieve best performance. The largest choice is not always the best for a number of reasons, including 
 - the speed of the computer
 - the capabilities of the system's ATA hardware
 - the choice of PIO transfer mode

R/W Mulitple choice has no impact upon performance when a DMA transfer mode is selected. In most cases, a R/W Multiple of 8 delivers the best performance on most Macintosh models.


TurboBootª

¥ TurboBootª should not be enabled if Netware 4.1 client software is installed. There is no problem with Netware 5.0 client software. 


FWB IDE Extensionª

¥ FWB IDE Extensionª should be installed only on PowerBook 5300 and PowerBook 190 laptops that are configured with removable media drives.

¥ Removable cartridges that do not contain an IDE driver must not be inserted in removable drives when the machine is starting up or else they will not be mounted. Please insert cartridges after the Desktop appears. This applies to cartridges, not canisters.

¥ On PowerBook 5300s: If installed, the FWB IDE driver will load at startup, even if the computer was started without a cartridge in the IDE drive.


FWB Crisis Toolª

¥ The driver that FWB Crisis Toolª installs is configured conservatively to enable it to work with almost all hard drives. Use the "Configure Driver" feature of the main application to fine tune the driver configuration for better drive performance.


PC Card (PCMCIA)

¥ PC Card (PCMCIA) devices on PowerBooks (PB190 and PB5300) are not explicitly supported in this release. However, Hard Disk ToolKitª does not prevent you from setting up and installing an IDE driver on a PC Card device. Proceed at your own risk.

¥ Under limited testing, we have had some success with the SyQuest SQ-1080. A system can be installed. ÒPut AwayÓ or ÒCmd-YÓ ejects the PC Card device. Holding down the option key while dragging the Desktop drive icon to the Trash ejects both the PC Card device and the removable media. Again, we do not claim support for PC Card devices on this release, so proceed at your own risk.


Miscellaneous Compatibility Issues

¥ If you are using System 7.5.x, we recommend that you update to the latest Macintosh System (version 7.5.5) available on many online services and directly from Apple. Refer to Apple's System Update Overview and Installation documentation for additional information.

¥ For maximum performance and compatibility, owners of FWBÕs NuBus SCSI JackHammer should update all devices on the JackHammer bus with Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.1's driver. Some third-party drivers erroneously reduce the amount of System heap space available for drivers and extensions. This can prevent Hard Disk ToolKitª from loading any additional devices on the bus. Simply update all devices on the system with the Hard Disk ToolKitª driver to avoid this problem.

¥ Mounting devices in FWB Mounterª and FWB Crisis Toolª: When in Device view, you can only mount volumes that would normally mount at startup. If a particular volume doesn't mount when you select a device in Device view and click the Mount button, you must switch to Volume view, and mount the volume from there.

If the device is controlled by a Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.x driver, you can activate the volume's Automount option using the Change Attributes command in the Volumes menu in the main Hard Disk ToolKitª application. (You may also double click a volume.) The Volumes menu is available when the Selector window is in Volume mode. Click the Automount checkbox to enable this option (enabled means the checkbox has a check in it). 

¥ Most disk diagnostic and repair utilities currently available do not properly recognize volumes that have capacities larger than 4 GB or allocation block sizes larger than 63.5 KB. Some utilities may erroneously report such volumes as having numerous serious problems with their master directory block, extents, and directory contents. Norton Utilities 3.2.1 or later has been updated to handle large volumes.

¥ Contrary to the System 7.5.3 release notes, the original models of Power Macintoshes (6100/7100/8100) do not support volumes larger than 4 GB under System 7.5.3. To determine the largest volume supported by your current combination of Mac OS System Software and Mac OS-compatible hardware, run either the main Hard Disk ToolKitª application or FWB Mounterª, open ÒAbout Hard Disk ToolKitªÉÓ (or "About FWB Mounterª") under the Apple menu, and select the ÒInfoÓ (or "System InfoÉ") button.

¥ The Sync-Cache option in Driver Configure is primarily intended for use on devices that are connected to the fast internal bus of the PCI Macintosh. Some users report sporadic data corruption during shutdown on these machines due to incomplete flushing of the write cache. Some older devices do not support the Sync-Cache option. If it defaults to ÒonÓ (box is checked), the drive supports it. If the box is not checked for a device, turn this option on at your own risk.

¥ You should not use older versions of RAID ToolKitª, Hard Disk ToolKit, or Hard Disk ToolKit¥PE to modify 2.0.5 or newer formatted drives.

¥ Early models of the Fujitsu IDE DynaMO drive (model M2541B) are incompatible with the PowerBook 190.

¥ IDE-configured models of Macintoshes create and support a type of HFS disk configuration that has no disk partition map structure; it contains one large HFS volume. Hard Disk ToolKitª does not explicitly support such a disk configuration but it will allow you to reconfigure the disk to a standard configuration.

¥ In some situations, removable media with a pre-Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0 or a non-FWB driver may not eject when you drag all its volumes to the Trash. If you turn on the drive that contains the media after your computer starts up or if you insert the media after the computer starts up and you mount one or more volumes on the media with Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0 or HDT Toolsª, then the media may not eject when you drag its last volume to the Trash. To fix the situation, update the driver on the media to Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0 or later.

¥ If you have FaxSTF on your system, check that you are running version 3.2.2 or later. Earlier versions prevent FWB Tool Managerª from launching properly.

¥ Inside Macintosh IV-style partitions (circa 1986) are not supported by Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.5. Removable cartridges partitioned in this style will not mount. Hard drives and removable cartridges cannot be updated to Inside Macintosh: Devices format (a.k.a. Inside Macintosh V-style) by Update Driver. Please backup and re-initialize hard drives and removable cartridges to bring them into a modern format.

¥ You cannot update the driver of a Hard Disk ToolKitª 1.8 level 2 encrypted volume with the Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.5 application. You must first decrypt the volume using the Hard Disk ToolKitª 1.8 Primer application, and then use the Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.5 application to update to a Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.5 driver. After updating to the Hard Disk ToolKitª 2.0.5 driver, you may encrypt the volume again.






FWB Software, LLC
185 Constitution Drive, Suite A
Menlo Park, California, USA 94025-1199

Phone
   ¥ Voice: 415-463-3500
   ¥ Fax: 415-463-3558
Internet
   ¥ URL: http://www.fwb.com
   ¥ General Information: info@fwb.com
   ¥ Technical Support Inquiries: support@fwb.com
   ¥ Sales Inquiries: sales@fwb.com
   ¥ Upgrade Inquiries: upgrade@fwb.com