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1991-01-20
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DiskInfo
Version 1.03
A Disk Information Utility For Ms-Dos
(c) Copyright 1991, by Kenneth R. Doebler
All Rights Reserved
released January 20, 1991
Disclaimer - Agreement
----------------------
Users of DiskInfo must accept this disclaimer of warranty:
"DiskInfo is supplied as is. The author disclaims all warranties,
expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties
of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The author
assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which
may result from the use of DiskInfo."
DiskInfo is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge to
the user for evaluation. Feel free to share it with your friends,
but please do not give it away altered or as part of another
package or system. The essence of "user-supported" software is to
provide personal computer users with quality software without high
prices, and yet to provide incentive for programmers to continue to
develop new products.
If you find this program useful and find that you are using
DiskInfo and continue to use DiskInfo after a reasonable trial
period, I would ordinarily be asking that you make a registration
payment of some kind. The registration fee would license one copy
for use on any one computer at any one time.
Since I am not set up and ready to receive registration payments at
this time, and since this is the first utility to be released by
myself, and since this is indeed a fairly simple utility, I am at
this time waiving the usual registration fee. However, future
versions of DiskInfo, as well as other utilities to be released,
may require a registration payment to license one copy.
Commercial users of DiskInfo must register by contacting Ken
Doebler within 30 days of first use or their license is withdrawn.
Site-License arrangements may be made by contacting Ken Doebler.
Anyone distributing DiskInfo for any kind of remuneration must
first contact Ken Doebler at the address listed at the end of this
document for authorization.
You are encouraged to pass a copy of DiskInfo along to your friends
for evaluation, provided that you:
1) Do not modify or alter the original program or documentation
files in any way.
2) Pass along the complete archive with all files included,
in it's original unaltered form.
Future releases of DiskInfo may require registration. Registered
users of DiskInfo and other Software Resource utilities will be
granted access to special support conferences on The Software
Resource.
DiskInfo Overview
-----------------
DiskInfo is a simple utility that will display information about
the current drive or the drive specified on the command line. The
information displayed is obtained from the disk's boot sector, or
more specifically, the BIOS Parameter Block (BPB).
While this is a very simple utility, the information displayed by
DiskInfo can often be very useful. DiskInfo can tell you a variety
of things about a disk, including total disk space, free disk
space, cluster size, type of media, FAT type, sector and track
information, and root directory capacity just to mention a few.
DiskInfo was written and compiled using Microsoft's BASIC 7.0 PDS
(Professional Development System) with a little additional help
from Microsoft's MASM 5.1.
How it works
------------
DiskInfo uses DOS Interrupt 25h (Absolute Disk Read) to read the
disk's boot sector into memory, where it then deciphers most of the
information it displays. Prior to doing this, DI also scans your
root directory to obtain the volume label information and makes a
call to DOS Interrupt 21h, Function 36h to obtain the amount of
disk free space available, along with a few other necessary DOS
calls to determine valid drives and so on.
Usage Syntax
------------
DiskInfo can be invoked in one of two ways as follows:
1) DI
2) DI <drive> or <drive:>
If DiskInfo is invoked without any command line arguments (1) then
DI will report information on the currently logged (default) drive.
No other command line arguments are available. DI will accept all
valid drive letters, upper or lowercase, from A-Z, with or without
an appended colon.
Information Displayed
---------------------
DiskInfo displays a full screen of information about the selected
disk as described below:
Volume Label : The disk's volume label. If no volume
label is present, DI will display "None"
in this field.
Media Type : The type of disk, for example, single
sided floppy, double sided floppy, fixed
disk (hard disk), and so on.
OEM ID : The system name field. This field
identifies the manufacturer whose system
formatted the disk. Some manufacturers do
not put a name here.
Total Space : Total disk space in bytes.
Space Used : Allocated disk space occupied by files.
Space Available : Free disk space available and unallocated.
Bytes Per Sector : Indicates your sector size in bytes. This
should always be 512 for DOS disks.
Total Disk Sectors : Indicates the total number of usable
sectors on the disk, regardless of whether
they are free, used or marked bad by DOS.
Usable refers to sectors which are
theoretically available to DOS for file
allocation.
Bytes Per Cluster : Indicates the disk's cluster size in bytes.
This value can vary depending upon how the
disk was formatted.
Total Disk Clusters : Indicates total disk clusters available for
file allocation.
Sectors Per Cluster : The number of sectors per cluster. This
can vary depending upon the disk format.
Reserved Sectors : The number of sectors reserved by DOS and
not available for use.
Sectors Per Track : The number of sectors per disk track.
Total Cylinders : The total number of cylinders (or tracks)
on the disk.
Hidden Sectors : Total number of hidden sectors on the disk.
Root Dir Sectors : The number of sectors allocated to the
disk's root directory. This is fixed and
set when the disk is formatted.
Root Starting Sector : The starting sector number for the disk's
root directory.
Maximum Root Entries : The maximum number of directory entries
which the root directory can hold.
Sectors Per FAT : The size in sectors of one copy of the
disk's FAT (File Allocation Table).
Number Of FATs : The number of copies of the disk's FAT.
This is typically 2, however more copies
are possible.
Total FAT Sectors : Total number of disk sectors occupied by
copies of the FAT.
Bits Per FAT Entry : The number of bits in one FAT en