HFS Plus Utilities Available for Online Purchase -- Alsoft announced last week that its two utilities - PlusMaker and PlusMaximizer - for converting hard disks to Apple's new Macintosh Extended Format (HFS Plus) are available for purchase and download at its Web site. With the release of Mac OS 8.1, users may use the new Extended Format, which saves disk space by increasing the number of allocation blocks on the disk. (See "All About Macintosh Extended Format (HFS Plus)" in TidBITS-414.) One catch, however, is that you must backup and initialize your disks with the new Extended Format, then restore the data - a time-consuming operation, especially for system administrators managing numerous Macs. PlusMaker (an 875K download) enables you to perform the conversion without reformatting; PlusMaximizer (a 265K download) gives you the option of using 512-byte allocation blocks instead of Apple's default size. Each utility costs $29.95, or you can purchase both as a 1.1 MB download for $39.95. [JLC]

<http://www.alsoftinc.com/>
<http://www.alsoftinc.com/beforeyoubuy.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/04668>