ACTION Space Doctor is the safest, fastest, easiest, most convenient way to convert your Mac OS Standard (HFS) formatted disks into Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format.
Mac OS Extended is Apple's new file format, available in Mac OS 8.1 or newer. The new file format is much more efficient, allowing you to recover a considerable amount of space on your hard disk.
The amount of space you will recover depends on several factors, including the number and size of the files on your disk.
ACTION Space Doctor requires Mac OS 8.1 or newer, and a Quadra or greater. These are the same minimum requirements as Apple's Mac OS Extended format. Mac OS 8.5 or newer and a PowerPC are recommended.
While you cannot convert a disk unless you’re running Mac OS 8.1 or newer, if you’re running Mac OS 7.5 or newer, you can examine the disk to see how much space you would save.
To convert a disk to Mac OS Extended format, ACTION Space Doctor needs between 5 and 10 megabytes of contiguous hard drive space, depending on how many files you have. If you have a large disk that is extremely full, ACTION Space Doctor may require more than 10 megabytes of hard drive space.
ACTION Space Doctor cannot convert the disk your machine started from. For this reason ACTION Space Doctor is available as a disk image of a bootable floppy disk.
To make a floppy from the disk image you will need Disk Copy, the latest version 6.3.2 is available on the ACTION Utilities web site at:
<ftp://209.35.126.231/pub/software/action/dc.hqx>
Once you have a copy of Disk Copy, launch it and when it comes up go to the "Utilities" Menu and select "Make a floppy.” This will bring up an open dialog. Open the ACTION Space Doctor.img file. After the image is loaded you will be asked to insert a high-density (1.44Mb) floppy disk. When you insert a disk you will be asked if you want to erase it and replace it's contents with "ACTION Space Doctor" hit the yes button. Disk copy will then write the image to the disk and when it is finished it will eject the floppy. Quit Disk Copy. Restart your Macintosh and insert the floppy as soon as you hear the normal start up sound. Your machine will boot from the floppy and you will be able to convert your normal start up volume.
When you launch ACTION Space Doctor, it will ask you for a serial number. If you have not purchased a serial number, you can still use ACTION Space Doctor on your computer to examine your disks and determine how much space you could recover if you converted. You can purchase serial numbers by visiting our web site at 'http://www.poweronsoftware.com/', through dealers and catalogs, or by calling us directly at 800-344-9160 or 612-317-0344.
You can download ACTION Space Doctor and other members of the ACTION Utilities product family from our web site at 'http://www.poweronsoftware.com'. Our site contains the latest versions of our products as well as comprehensive documentation and updates from previous versions, and is the definitive source of information about the ACTION Utilities product line.
For more information about our security, screen sharing, and network management products, please visit 'http://www.poweronsoftware.com'.
HFS+ identifies a new disk format introduced by Apple in Mac OS 8.1. Officially, this new format is called the Mac OS Extended format. To use HFS+ disks, you must install Mac OS 8.1, Mac OS 8.5 or Mac OS 8.5.1. Earlier versions of the Mac OS cannot access files on Mac OS Extended formatted volumes.
What is the advantage of HFS+?
The most significant improvement in HFS+ is an amazing increase in the efficiency of file storage. This is achieved by a dramatic reduction in allocation block size. Basically files take up less space on an HFS+ disk than they do on an HFS volume. This gives you the benefit of storing a larger number of files. If you convert a disk from HFS to HFS+, you will recover space from every file.
How safe is ACTION Space Doctor?
ACTION Space Doctor is designed to be completely safe. ACTION Space Doctor keeps your data intact and does not move any of your files to achieve the conversion. It simply converts your disk's directory. Verification of the converted directory ensures safe conversion. ACTION Space Doctor is built to permit interruptions of any kind, including power loss without risk to your data.
How much space will I get back by converting to HFS+?
The space you recover is proportional to the size of the volume and the number of files on the disk. Bigger disks have a greater potential for wasted space for each file. As an example, if you have a 5 GB disk, the possible wasted space is 82 KB for each file. If you have 15,000 files on your disk, you have the potential of recovering 1.2 GB of space. And don’t forget the ongoing space saving benefits of HFS+. As you add more files to your HFS+ disk, each file will take up less space.
How long does it take to convert my drive?
Our own testing shows that ACTION Space Doctor is much faster than any alternative options available for converting. Without ACTION Space Doctor you have to back up all of your data, reformat your disks using Apple’s Drive Set Up, making sure to choose Extended format and then restore your data from the backup. This could take hours, and then you have to set everything back up the way you like it, aliases won't work and would need to be replaced, and worse you wouldn’t get the as much space as possible because reformatting disks with the Drive Set Up gives you allocation blocks that are 5-7 times larger than the format allows.
With ACTION Space Doctor there is no need to initialize your disks to take advantage of the HFS+ format (while a backup is not required it is always a good idea to have one before making any big changes). Converting your disks gives you the maximum benefit of the Mac OS Extended format and takes just a few minutes. None of your settings will have changed, your aliases will still work, you will have more free space and file you add in the future will not take up any where near as much space.
What is an allocation block and how does it affect how much space my files take up?
Allocation Blocks are the method that Apple originally came up with to track the location of files on disks. The details are fairly complex but the bottom line is that under HFS disks are broken down into a little over 65,000 allocation blocks. Hard drives were much smaller then (10-20 Mb) and HFS was a leap forward that would allow Macintosh Computers to easily use larger and larger hard drives as they became available. Now let’s jump to the present day most people have hard drives that range in size from 2-8 Gb some people have much more. If you have a 2 Gb Disk and divide it by 65,000 blocks you have a block size of 32K, if you have a 4 Gb Drive that jumps to 64K per block. Only one file can be in each block which means that if you have a 2K file (most aliases are 2K) it takes up an entire 61.5K on your 4 Gb disk. If you have a 65K file it takes up 128K on your disk. As you can see your disk can rapidly become full and still have a huge amount of unused space.
HFS+ changes the 65.000 number of Allocation Blocks to 4 Billion. This means that block sizes are much smaller, down to the minimum 512 bytes or 1/120th of the HFS block size on your 4 Gb drive. This means that the 2K file in the example above only uses 2K of disk space the 65K file only uses 65K and so on.
Does using the minimum allocation block size affect the performance of my hard drive or virtual memory?
In a word: No.
Independent testing shows that the performance differences between a larger allocation block and the minimum allocation block can barely be measured.
Will converting to HFS+ change the file fragmentation on my drive?
No. The new file manager in Mac OS 8.1 and later is designed to keep file fragmentation to a minimum whether you are using HFS or HFS+. Using ACTION Space Doctor to convert your disk will not change the fragmentation.
Does ACTION Space Doctor replace my hard disk drivers or modify them at all?
No, ACTION Space Doctor changes the disk format from HFS to HFS+. It does not change or modify your existing driver software.
Does ACTION Space Doctor have any problems converting disks formatted with non-Apple disk driver software?
As long as the third party driver software you use is compatible with Mac OS 8.1, 8.5 and 8.5.1 you shouldn’t have a problem.
What if I have multiple disks or partitions?
When you use Mac OS 8.1 or Mac OS 8.5, you can convert none, any, or all of your disks and/or partitions to HFS+.
ACTION Space Doctor treats each disk or partition as a separate disk to convert.
Do I need any special software to use the converted disks?
No, you will only need to be running Mac OS 8.1 or greater.
• Fixed a problem that was causing problems with Japanese file names during conversion.
1.0.2
• Found a bug in Macintosh OS 8.1 MountCheck that trashes disks under some extremely unusual circumstances. We put in a workaround so that even if ACTION Space Doctor runs into that bug no problem occurs.
• Added a confirming alert dialog before converting a disk, asking "are you sure you want to convert...?"
• Resolved a problem in the code that checks for non-HFS+ compliant apps.
• Resolved a low memory issue that would occasionally prevent conversion.
• If ACTION Space Doctor hits a serious error during conversion for any reason, it will attempt to restore the disk before quitting.
1.0.1 b3
• If there isn't enough contiguous free space to convert the disk, ACTION Space Doctor will try moving one big file before giving up.
• Allocate space for HFS+ b-trees more efficiently, so ACTION Space Doctor needs less free disk space for the conversion.
• Put up a more informative error message if there isn't enough free disk space.
If you use any of the following systems your computer will need to be booted from a disk that uses that system. ACTION Space Doctor's disk image uses a US version of the system and there is a known limitation of the Mac OS that prevents us from converting Non-Roman disks while booted from the US version. You will not be able to use the bootable floppy provided. If you have questions please contact Power On Software Technical support at the numbers below.
Support: (612) 376-4427. Support can also be reached at support@poweronsoftware.com. If you find a bug in our software, please send email to beta@poweronsoftware.com. Please include your phone number and email address so that a Customer Support or Quality Assurance representative can contact you.
