===================================== ECopy V1.00 Economical File Copier Documentation - May 3, 1992 - ===================================== Copyright (c) 1992 by Sam Yee. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT --------- The program ECopy and its documentation are written and copyrighted by Sam Yee. They may be distributed freely providing the following restrictions are satisfied: o Distributors may not charge more than the cost of a diskette used in the distribution of this program. o Distributors may only distribute the unmodified copy of the original program, along with it's documentation, and copyright notices intact. o Commercial distribution is only possible with written permission from the author. DISCLAIMER ---------- This program and its documentation is provided "as is". No warranties are made with respect to the accuracy, reliability, performance or operation of this software and information. You are using this program at your own risk. The author is not liable for any damages that may have been caused by using this software. INTRODUCTION ------------ Have you ever wanted to copy files from your harddrive onto floppy disks, so that the number of disks used is kept at a minimum? For example, you have 100 pictures (eg. IFF) or sound files (eg. modules) on your harddrive, and you wanted to copy them to disks. Now, a hundred files of moderate size would take many disks. Of course you may say, why don't I use a harddrive backup program? The problem with this method is that if you want to retrieve a file from the backup disks it would take a long time. REQUIREMENTS ------------ This program runs on any Amiga with OS 2.04 or higher. USER MANUAL ----------- ECopy must be run from the CLI/Shell and has the following command line template: ECopy [options] [FROM] ... [TO] The "FROM" and "TO" keywords are optional and are ignored. " ..." is the listing of files you want to copy to the destination path, "" (eg. DF0:). The options are: -b Buffer size (in K). Default is 8K. Minimum is 1K. -c Clone (ie. same date, protection bits, etc.) the files. -l List all the files that could not be copied. -m Move (automatic cloning) files instead of copying. -q Quiet mode (does not display copying status). -r Reserve space (in K) on destination disk. -s Add suffix to copied files. -b This option is for setting the buffer size (in kilobytes) used in the copying process. The closer the buffer size is to the file size, the faster the program will copy. A buffer size of 8K is generally good. For example, "ECopy -b4 * DF0:" will copy all the files in the current directory to the disk drive "DF0:" with a 4096 byte buffer. -c This option is for cloning the copied files so that both the source and destination files have the same dates, comments, and protection bits. -l This option allows you to list all the files that could not be copied to the disk(s) you supplied. If this option is not specified, only the number of files not copied is displayed. Each filename will be displayed along with its file size when this option is enabled. -m This option is for moving files from the source directory to the destination disk. That is, a file is deleted after it's copied. All files protected from deletion will not be deleted. If a file cannot be copied the original copy is not deleted. Cloning is automatic with this option enabled. -q This causes the filenames not to be displayed while copying. -r This will allow you to reserve a number of kilobytes on the destination disk. Note that the unused space on the disk is usually more than the reserved size you specified. It is particular useful if you want to add small programs, such as viewers, players, and "readme" files, to each disk. -s This will append a suffix name to each file that is copied. For example, "ECopy -s.bak myfile DF0:" will copy "myfile" from the current directory into "DF0:myfile.bak". This is particular useful for backups. Options can be placed anywhere on the command line. must be the last argument specified. For example, "ECopy DF0: myfiles/*" will fail, but "ECopy myfiles/* DF0:" is okay. During the copying, press ^C (control-C) to abort. Any incomplete files will be deleted from the destination disk. Files of zero size are not copied. After each disk is nearly full and further copying is not possible, a message will be displayed: This disk has not enough space, please insert next disk. "R" to resume, "C" to change destination path, "Q" to quit... Now put in a new disk, and type "R" followed by a carriage return and the copying process resumes with the same . Type "Q" to quit copying. If you want to change the destination path, type "C" and a message will be displayed: Please enter new path: Now, type something like "DF1:" or "DF2:" if you want to copy to other drives. EFFICIENCY ---------- I have tested the program on picture files, and music files of various sizes and came up with only about an average of 1-2% of disk space wasted. Your mileage may vary, depending on the file size distribution of all the files you are copying. Of course, it's always possible to manually copy files with 0% space wasted, but the calculations required makes it impractical. Before I wrote this utility, each disk I copied manually ended up with an average of about 5-10% disk space wasted. If you collect pictures or sound files, you can save some disks and time! LAST WORDS ---------- I hope you find this utility useful. Although, this utility is distributed as public domain, I do accept donations as I'm yet another poor college student. Donations above $5 (CAN$/US$) will receive the source code for this program, if requested. If you have any questions, ideas (for this program or new ones), comments, bug reports, etc. please mail them to the addresses below. Thanks for using this program! Home Address: Sam Yee c/o Utilities 4595 Nanaimo St. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5N-5J5 Internet: samy@sfu.ca FidoNet: 1:153/765 (Terra Firma BBS! 604-434-3665)