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1990-08-13
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LCOPY V4.1 documentation (FREE!!!)
NB: Use this program entirely at your own risk. I take no respon-
sibility towards anybody using this program.
LCOPY is a program written especially to copy high density disks
on a one drive system. Using the DOS copy command usually takes
four swaps before a 1.2meg disk is complete. This often leads to
confusion, and sometimes even copying over the source disk!
This gave me the idea of writing a program to do it in one pass.
The program still allows you to copy low density disks, thereby
being a total replacement for the DOS diskcopy command.
LCOPY makes use of the "cheap" memory that your harddisk sup-
plies. The program reads in the entire disk in large chunks, and
stores these in a temporary file on the harddisk. The program
will check if there is sufficient space on the harddisk. When the
copy is complete, the file is erased. Simple!
EMS is used automatically if available. Obviously there must also
be enough EMS. I have also implemented the use of XMS as of this
version. As of version 4.1 the search method is: XMS, if not
found try EMS, if not found look for a ramdisk, if that is not
found, use the harddisk.
The program is also quite fast. It may even be faster in future
versions. Just have patience.
Invoke lcopy as follows:
LCOPY [options]
where the options are as follows:
/s:drive the floppy disk to use for the copy.
/t:drive the disk where the file is/will be stored.
/r only read the disk to a file.
/w only write the file back to a disk.
/f:filename the filename to use for the copy. If no extension
is given, then the default of .DSK will be used. A
full pathname may be used, but if a drive is
specified, it will be ignored. Use /t: to specify
the drive.
/v verify data as it is written.
/m use this command when copying to a disk with bad
sectors. LCOPY will then try to move files away
from the bad sectors on the destination disk! This
procedure is totally safe, and no data will be
lost. The bad sectors will be marked as un-usable.
Please do not use DISKCOMP on disks that you have
used the /m option. They will not be the same. To
make double sure everything is in order, use the
/v option with this command. This command should
not be used to copy 1.2 meg disks to 360k disks.
This is an unsafe practice and should never be
done.
/b:xxx perform a batch copy. xxx specifies number of
disks in the batch. This command reads all the
disks first, and then writes them back to disk,
formatting if necessary. This command can be used
with any of the other commands. If you specify a
filename, the extension will be ignored.
/a always format the target disk.
/h or /? a help screen similar to this.
Examples:
lcopy /b:5 reads five disks, stores them, writes
them back to new disks
lcopy /s:b /t:e reads a disk in drive B, stores the tem-
porary file on drive E, writes the file
back to drive B
lcopy /w /f:disk1 /m /v writes a temporary file called disk1.dsk
stored on drive C to drive A, moves
files that are on bad sectors, verifies
the integrity of the data.
The default parameters are /s:A: /t:C: and the file will be read
and written back to the disk. These parameters may change if a
ramdisk with enough space is detected.
Version 2.0 enhancements:
1. It is now able to format the target disk.
2. There was a bug that caused the program to crash if you
changed media just before the copy. eg if you took a direc-
tory of a 360k disk and then tried to use LCOPY straight af-
terwards to copy a 1.2meg disk, the program would crash.
3. Better error messages.
Version 3.0 enhancements:
1. Automatically detects and uses ramdisks.
2. Changed the way parameters are entered.
3. Can specify a different filename.
4. Allows you to only read or write the disk. Useful for ar-
chiving purposes, and for transferring complete disks by
modem. This feature can also be used to make multiple copies
of a disk without re-reading the source.
Version 3.1 enhancements and bug fixes:
1. Version 3.0 did not work unless you specified some command
line parameters. This has been fixed. Unfortunately, the
program is now an EXE file. Please remove the COM file from
your harddisk before using the EXE version.
2. EMS is used, if available.
3. Under DOS 4.x, unique volume serial numbers are generated
for each disk, no matter how many times a disk is copied.
4. The colours that I used were unreadable on monochrome
monitors. This has been fixed.
Version 4.0 enhancements and bug fixes:
1. The disk serial number was displayed incorrectly.
2. Batch copies are supported.
3. On completion, the program asks if another copy is required.
The previous command line options are used.
4. Files can automatically be moved away from bad sectors.
5. If EMS and a ramdisk was available, LCOPY would terminate
with "Not enough disk space for temporary file" even though
there was enough EMS. This has been fixed.
6. Partially formatted disks that were created with FASTBACK
can now be copied to without re-formatting first.
7. Under some circumstances, disks copied using EMS were copied
incorrectly.
8. The screen display has changed since the previous version.
9. The program is now more compatible with XT type machines.
Version 4.1 enhancements and bug fixes:
1. A format can now be forced.
2. XMS support has been added.
3. After exciting LCOPY V4.0, the A: drive was disabled. This
has been fixed.
4. The screen is now cleared properly in modes which have more
than 25 lines.
5. I have increased the speed of EMS usage by a factor 2!
6. WARNING: On some PC's that use old versions of Microsoft's
RAMDRIVE, LCOPY may crash. The only fix that I know of is to
upgrade RAMDRIVE, or to force LCOPY to use a harddisk. (use
the /t:c switch)
Richard Ellerbrock
10/08/90
Thanks goes to Roelof J. van Suilichem for many of the ideas.
Thanks also goes to Geoff Dellow for the file move idea.