Making a zone a fixed size

[MonarchDodra]

I have a particular usecase: I have a folder on a development disc that regularly grows or shrinks anywhere from 1GB to 35GB. Because of this, I want to allocate it to a fixed-size 40 GB zone near the beginning of the disc, so as to avoid its size change impacting the other zones.

I cannot, for the life of me, get it to work. I can add a gap after the end all I want, but I can't seem to get the entire zone a fixed size.

This is my code:

Code:

  FileSelect
    DirectoryPath("...")
  FileActions
    SortByName(Ascending)
    AddGap(ZoneBegin + 40Gi)
  FileEnd

As you can see, I tried to use AddGap with ZoneBegin, rather than ZoneEnd, but it doesn't work. All this code does is create a gap after my zone that is 20Gi big.

Any help? 

I also tried toying around with variables, but they appear to be re-evaluated from their expression every time they are used, making it impossible to extract the "ZoneBegin" of a given spot. 

[Darlis]

There is bug with AddGap that makes it impossible to use some variables correctly, see this post for further info.

What you can do is the following:

Code:

  FileSelect
    DirectoryPath("...")
  FileActions
    SetVariable(ZoneBeginVar, ZoneBegin)
    SortByName(Ascending)
    AddGap(ZoneBeginVar + 40Gi)
  FileEnd

[MonarchDodra]

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I had stumbled upon that thread after posing, and started looking for a workaround.

I had also tried the very code you posted, but it didn't work either. It would appear the variables are re-evaluated from their expression every time they are used, so the "wrong" ZoneBegin is used when ZoneBeginVar is re-evaluated inside the AddGap function  The debug info shows it too.

I ended up fixing my problem by simply using absolute sizes calculated by hand. While I would have wished to tweak my script as much as possible, to make it generic and distributable to my co-workers ( being the geek that I am), I'm already more than thrilled and incredibly happy with what MyDefrag has done for me.

[Darlis]

According to the debug log, this one should work correctly:

Code:

 
  SetVariable(ZoneBeginVar, ZoneBegin)

  FileSelect
    DirectoryPath("...")
  FileActions
    SortByName(Ascending)
  FileEnd

  MakeGap(ZoneBeginVar + 40Gi)

[ff_mfg]

I've used
    AddGap(RoundUp(ZoneEnd,50GB))
for similar reasons.
The obvious downside is that disk layout will be screwed up if the zone gets larger than 50GB.

[MonarchDodra]

Hey, thanx,

I like the RoundUp approach:
The truth is that I have several of these varying size folders on my drive. So do my colleagues. This "Align each folder on a 20 GB alignment" thing will work great to handle everyone in a generic fashion!