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Turnbull China Bikeride
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Turnbull China Bikeride - Disc 2.iso
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DISKUTIL
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DISKINIT
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DiscReadMe
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1992-05-03
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3KB
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80 lines
DiscInit is a utility to blank floppy discs
instantly without the need to delete, possibly many,
files.
It was written primarily to speed up hard disc
backups using tar by Frank Lancaster. The problem
was that blank discs are needed to backup onto and
the solution provided by tar involves formatting
each disc used before copying onto it. This is fine
if you have a set of unformatted discs, but wastes
lots of time reformatting discs that have been used
for an old backup. DiscInit looks to see if the
disc in the drive is formatted - if it is then the
root catalogue and map are rewritten to give what is
effectively a blank disc - if not the disc will be
formatted as normal.
DiscInit works with disc formats L,D and E.
F format discs will be reformatted since I do not
have the means to sort out a problem that occurs if
an attempt to reinitialise the disc is made.
DiscInit is a utility so should be placed in your
library directory.
Syntax: *DiscInit <drive> [L/D/E/F] [Y]
DO NOT USE DiscInit with discs that have defects
since they will be marked as non defective resulting
in possible data loss. If someone can tell me how
to check automatically whether a disc has defects
I'll fix this.
Suggested use with Frank Lancaster's tar for hard
disc backup (available from Newcastle info server):
Set Alias$Format DiscInit %*0 |m Dismount 0
Set tar$scrap ram:tarscrap
Dir scsi::4
tar cvzMFf adfs::0.backup *
Remember to allocate ram disc memory!
This has been tested with tar 1.1n (I have no idea
why the Dismount is needed above - but it works).
I can be contacted by JANET email at
G.N.Sinclair@uk.ac.strath probably at least until
autumn 1992. After that at 294 Churchill Drive,
Glasgow, G11 7HB, Scotland.
This program is public domain and no charge of any
kind may be made for its distribution. It may be
freely copied and passed on. It may not be
incorporated in commercial software without
permission or used as a `free gift' to aid sales of
another product. This text file must accompany any
distribution.
DiscInit is copyright © G N Sinclair 1992.
History:
0.03 F format discs are now passed to *Format since
the machine would hang otherwise. I don't have
access to a RISC OS 3 machine to find the
problem. A disc format type in the DiscInit
command which does not match the old disc type
now causes a format to the new type. The
disk is now dismounted and any filer windows
closed. Unfortunately the desktop filer
doesn't actually forget the disc and asks
whether the `old' one should be forgotten when
it next sees the disc.
First general release version.
0.02 Fixed minor bug that stopped the program
passing on to Format when an alias was defined
for Format.
0.01 The original.