Thirty years ago: MS-DOS 6.00, DoubleSpace, and MultiConfig

In addition to several new full-screen utilities, like DEFRAG to defragment your hard disk (licensed from Symantec), MSBACKUP to efficiently backup your hard disk (also licensed from Symantec), and MSAV to check for viruses (licensed from Central Point Software), there were a number of new command-line programs, such as CHOICE, DELTREE, MOVE, MSCDEX, and SMARTDRV.

But the biggest addition to MS-DOS 6.00 was a new feature called DoubleSpace (dubbed MagicDrive" internally) that automatically compressed everything on your hard disk, providing up to double" the amount of effective disk space - or more, or less, depending on how compressible your files were overall.

Despite growing up with MS-DOS since our first computer was a 286 PC in 1990 or so, I never used any of these advanced features. I was 6-7, and just wanted to play games, basically. It's only now that I'm much older that I actually admire the crazy things people have managed to squeeze out of - or into - DOS.