GRDuw is a Windows 95/98 disk utility that handle your removable and fixed drives. This user friendly disk utility let you format, duplicate and repair your disks. It support the MS-DMF format that Microsoft employ to distribute it's software on diskettes. The program has an optimized format procedure to give you a disk that read or write quicker. The disk duplication is a one pass procedure even on removable hard disk like the Iomega Zip100 or other similar drives. GRDuw let you known detailed information on your system disk and devices. The program has 10 additional packages for the following languages: Italian, Danish, Swedish, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Serbian and Portuguese. The program comes with a setup program tha allows you to install, evaluate and completely unistall the package leaving your system clean.
Description
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This Windows 95 disk utility (does not run under NT) allows you to Duplicate/Format/Compare/Repair your disks. It supports Microsoft Distribution Format (MS-DMF) diskettes plus removable and fixed HD drives. The program has the following major features:
* Setup program for easy Install/Remove (also in batch).
* Command line options for disk duplication without user intervention.
* Multiple language: English, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Serbian and Portuguese.
* Support for 1.2Mb, 720Kb, 1.44Mb, 1.72Mb, MS-DMF (Microsoft Distribution Format), fixed and removable hard disk (like Iomega ZIP or similar).
* Duplicate your disks quickly while you do other jobs and skip the empty tracks to shorten the duplication time.
* Preview the diskette contents before you duplicate it.
* Create many copies of the same disk with only one disk read (also for removable hard disks).
* Compare one disk to another.
* Save/Load binary disk images for a later disk generation. Also you can assign a comment to every disk image for easy retrieval.
* Optimized disk format in order to speed up the read access by every application.
* Format and Repair hard disks and floppies. The program is able to move the data clusters and mark the failed tracks or cylinders as BAD on FAT12 and FAT16 file systems. Generate a repair report.
* Boot sector consistency check (verify some fixed fields) and re-creation capability (destroy your boot virus).
* Automatically associates the program with a .dim extension to be fully integrated with the explorer shell. Also allows you to create a desktop shortcut icon on which you can drop a disk image file for a quick duplication.
* Display disk detailed information and system devices information and generate a report.
* Language translation SDK available on request.
What's New
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* Lower license price: regular is 29US$, limited time special offer is $25US.
* A setup program was added to yield GRDuw more professional.
* Full support for quick format/duplicate/repair any removable hard disk.
* New language translations: French, Spanish, Catalan, Serbian and Portuguese.
* Format and Repair report dialog can be automatically shown at the end of the operation.
* New System dialog lists your system hardware devices other than Windows and BIOS version.
* Command line options were added to allow you to duplicate your disks in batch.
* Enhanced the low-level code to make the program more compatible with any PC.
* Minor bug fixes.
The major addition of this version is the full support to format, duplicate and repair the emerging removable hard disks like Iomega ZIP, JAZ, Syquest EZFlyer and many others (the only constraint is that you have sufficient fixed disk space to hold the removable disk image). These new devices will soon replace the old floppies, and GRDuw is ready now to offer you more easy of use and the best performance, when compared with similar utilities distributed by the removable HD manufacturers.
The language translations for French, Spanish, Catalan, Serbian and Portuguese were added to meet the growing list of International users.
A new added option allows you to automatically display a report dialog after a format or a repair operation completes. This can be very handy when you start an operation and leave the program running alone. When you come back, you want to known if there were errors and where. Another useful option for the batch users is the addition of some command line options that allows disk duplication without any user intervention.
A new System dialog box has been added to show your system devices other than the Windows version, the BIOS version and date, the memory usage and the memory total and free space. This option can be very useful in case of problems to build a detailed report of your system.
As usual, also this version has few minor bug fixes.
For more details, please consult the help file.
Known Problems
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As all the programs that overwork the system performances using the low-level interface, GRDuw does not correctly run on all hardware configurations. Great effort and care have been taken to make this version of the program reliable on all systems for the 1.68Mb and 1.72Mb formats. However there are some PC's which the program will not correctly work for these formats. To better track these problems the "System" dialog was added in order to collect the user installed hardware, BIOS version and Windows 95 version. This is no easy task to do this with the standard Windows tools.
If you experience such problems, please email me a message to grsoft@kagi.com with attached a copy of the report created from the "System" dialog. I do not promise to solve your problem but surely I will try to help you understand why your system does not work with GRDuw.
I had an e-mail from a PC installer that found a problem with all motherboard's type ASUS (TX97XE) and all motherboard's with a TX chipset and BIOS version 1.04 or less. The problem has been removed by updating the BIOS to version 1.06.
Also, the LS-120 drive seem to have problems with the 1.68Mb and 1.72Mb formats.
Evolution
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We are working to make future versions of GRDuw running under Windows NT.
We have planned to update the Repair feature in order to make it works on FAT32 disks.
The "make disk bootable" option will be added to the Format dialog.
Install
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Unzip the distribution archive and run the setup.exe program. This program will copy all the needed GRDuw files where you want and will register GRDuw on your system. This setup program allows you to add a desktop icon, and to list the program in the "Start Menu" or in the "Start Menu\Programs" menu. It also registers itself into the Control Panel to allow quick and full unistall. If you need to install a language translation you must unzip the translation package just after you had unzip the program distribution archive and then run the setup program.
Remove
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From the "Control Panel" - "Add/Remove Programs" you can quickly and completely remove the program from your system in keeping with the Windows 95 standards.
License
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This is NOT FREE software. This license allows you to use this software for evaluation purposes without any charge for a period of 30 days. If you use this software after the 30 days evaluation period a registration is required (see the help file for details on how to).
I recommend that you register the program ONLY after you have full tested it on your system. This shareware version behaves exactly as the registered version.
Registration REBATE - REBATE - REBATE
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Thanks to the growing interest and to better promote this product, this version is licensed at ONLY $25US until 1 March 1998. After this date the normal single user registration fee will be $29US (site licenses $800US and world-wide licenses $2000US).
Register immediately: do not lose out on this unique rebate occasion!
Credit cards accepted are: VISA, Master Card, American Express, Discovery and Dinners Club.
You can also register this product directly on the WEB: http://order.kagi.com/?LU with a secured transfer protocol, or by phone: +1 (510) 658-5244.
NOTE: registrations by e-mail will not be accepted if coming from anonymous e-mail addresses.
Disclaimer of Warranty
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This software and the accompanying files are provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance of merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. Because of the various hardware and software environments into which this software may be put, no warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is offered. Please use the Shareware concept and extensively try this software before to buy it.
Any liability of the seller will be limited exclusively to product price refund.
This software is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP).
ASP wants to make sure that The Shareware Principle works for you. If you are unable to
resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly,
ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with
an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write
to the ASP Ombudsman at 157-F Love Ave. Greenwood, IN 26142 USA, FAX 317-888-2195 or
send email to omb@asp-shareware.org.
Distribution
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You may freely distribute the files inside the compressed archive as long as they aren't modified in any way. Other text files can be added to the archive. Please contact the author for written permission.
Author information
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Ing. Roberto Grassi
P.O.BOX 48, 10096 Leumann (Torino) ITALY, EUROPE.
Internet E-Mail : grsoft@kagi.com, support@grsoftware.net
