============================================ ECopy V1.10 Economical File Copy Utilitiy Documentation - February 20, 1994 - ============================================ Copyright (c) 1992-1994 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, source file, 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 hundreds of IFF/GIF pictures 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. ECopy is a simple utility that allows you to copy files from harddrive to disks easily. REQUIREMENTS ------------ This program runs on any Amiga with OS 2.04 or higher. COMMAND USAGE ------------- ECopy must be run from the CLI/Shell and has the following command line template: FROM/M,TO/A,QUIET/S,BUF=BUFFER/K/N,CLONE/S,LISTNC/S,MOVE/S, RES=RESERVE/K/N,SUF=SUFFIX/K,BLOCKCAP/K/N,FORCE/S,READFILE/K, NCTOFILE/K Where: FROM This optional keyword specifies where to copy the files from. E.g., "ECopy C: T: SYS: #?.IFF TO DF0:". TO This optional keyword specifies where to copy the files to. E.g., "ECopy MODS:A#? TO DF0:". QUIET This option causes the filenames not to be displayed while copying. E.g., "ECopy #? DF0: QUIET". BUF=BUFFER 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. E.G., "ECopy BUF 4 #? DF0:" will copy all the files in the current directory to the disk drive "DF0:" with a 4096 bytes buffer. BUFFER and BUF are analogous. CLONE This option is for cloning the copied files so that both the source and destination files have the same dates, comments, and protection bits. LISTNC If option is specified all those files not copied will be output to the standard output and/or to the file specified by NCTOFILE. E.g., "ECopy #?.GIF DF0: LISTNC". MOVE This option is for moving files from the source files and directories to the destination disk. That is, a file is deleted after it's copied. All files protected from deletion will not be deleted, unless the FORCE option is specified. If a file cannot be copied the original copy is not deleted. Cloning is automatic with this option enabled, so the CLONE keyword need not be specified. E.g., "ECopy MOVE FROM PICS: TO DF0:" RES=RESERVE 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. SUF=SUFFIX This will append a suffix name to each file that is copied. For example, "ECopy SUF .bak myfile DF0:" will copy "myfile" from the current directory into "DF0:myfile.bak". This is particular useful for backups. BLOCKCAP This option allows you to specify how many bytes in each block is actually capable of storing file data. For example, for OFS disks it's 488 bytes per block and FFS disks it's 504 bytes. If the disks you are using are formatted with either OFS or FFS you need not specify this option. The program uses this value to determine if a file to be copied will fit in the disk. If you are using MSDOS disks, it assumes 512 bytes are usable on each block. If this option is not specified, the program will assume all the bytes in a block are capable of storing file data. E.g., "ECopy #?.SND XF0: BLOCKCAP 500". FORCE When specified, all deletion of files are forced even if the files are protected from deletion. If the destination disk contains a file protected from deletion, with the same name as one of your source files, the destination file will be deleted and replaced. When you are moving files (specified by MOVE), upon a successful moves, the source files will be deleted even if they're delete protected. E.g., "ECopy #? DF0: FORCE". READFILE Normally, you specify the files to copy from the command line. However, you may also read these names from a file. If you don't want to specify any file on the command line, you must use an invalid file name (such as NIL:) to trick the OS when it parses the command line options. E.g., "ECopy mod.#? DF0: READFILE MODFILES". E.g., "ECopy NIL: DF0: READFILE PICFILES", but ignore the error message, "NIL:: device (or volume) is not mounted". NCTOFILE/K In the event that not all files are copied, this option allows you to specify a file to write theese file names to. The output file can then be used at a later time via the READFILE option. E.g., "ECopy #? DF0: NCTOFILE nocopy.txt". Options can be placed anywhere on the command line. During the copying, press ^C (control-C) to abort. Any incomplete files will be deleted from the destination disk. After each disk is nearly full and further copying is not possible, a message will be displayed: : disk full more files to be copied. [R]etry, [C]hange disk, or [A]bort? Now put in a new disk, and press "R" and the copying process resumes with the same destination disk name. Press "A" to abort copying. If you want to change the destination path, press "C" and a message will be displayed: Enter new disk name []: Now, type something like "DF1:" or "DF2:" if you want to copy to other drives. If you just press return the destination disk name will not be changed. 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% to 1% 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! CONTACT ------- I hope you find this utility useful. 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! Snail Mail: Sam Yee 4595 Nanaimo St. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5N 5J5 Internet: samy@sfu.ca FidoNet: 1:153/765 (Terra Firma BBS @ 604-434-3665)