HARD DISC UTILITIES ------------------- Author: N.Reeves Date: 18 Nov 88 Introduction ------------ This document describes the purpose and use of the following set of hard disc utilities. 1.HFORM - Hard disc formatter. 2.BestCopy - Recovers files containing defective sectors. 3.*CheckMap - Checks new disc map and overwrites bad copy with good. 4.Far - Archive hard disc to floppies and restore. These are to work under RISC OS 2.00 and with the exception of Far they should be self documenting. Separate documentation is needed for Far because it has a wide range of complex options. This documentation should be in printed form and in a file and should also contain a very brief description of the other utilities. HFORM ----- purpose: A hard disc formatter for Archimedes ADFS. use: The program should be used in conjuction with the documentation given in the user guide. It is a BASIC program which does not use the WIMP. After a dialogue with the user to determine the parameters of the particular drive it formats the drive. The user can then optionally do a soak test to try and find any additional defects. location: The latest version can be found as net#arf:$.A500.FileCore.HForm BestCopy -------- purpose: If some of the sectors of a file this program will try to recover as much of the file as possible. use: BestCopy is a BASIC program which does not use the WIMP. It first prints out a few lines describing its purpose then asks the user whether he wants to swap discs (in case he has only a single floppy drive and wants the output file on a different disc). After prompting for the source and destination filenames it copies as much as is readable from the source to the destination, filling any unrecoverable sectors with 'bad?'. location: The latest version can be found as net#arf:$.NReeves.DiscUtils.BestCopy *CheckMap --------- purpose: *CheckMap checks that the map of a new map disc has the correct checksums, and is consistent with the directory tree. If only one copy is good it allows you to rewrite the other. use: *CheckMap is a *command in the RISC OS ROM, *Checkmap []. As such it can only be used when there is access to the command line interpreter. It prints out the file it is looking at, as it walks the directory tree. location: In the RISC OS ROM Far --- purpose: To allow the user to archive from his hard disc to floppies and restore the archive at a later date. The program also allows the user to do incremental backups and to be selective about the files he archives. use: The program is written in C and does not use the wimp. Options can be given in the command tail or by a dialogue with the user. Archimedes archive program version 0.03 Options: Capital indicate acceptable abbreviations -Dirs : Directories to be transferred. If omitted, all will be transferred : (Can backup from several drives by including the disc specifier : in the pathname). -Bdirs : Directories to be restored from, if not restoring to original place. : In this case this keyword and -dirs must specify precisely the same : number of directories, with -bdirs sepcifying where the files : are to be found, and -dirs specifying where they are to be placed. : Directories given to this keyword must be pathnames starting $ : Only valid in conjuction with -get : Otherwise a space separated list must be given -Put : Transfer to backup -Get : Transfer from backup. Precisely one of get and put must be given -All : Move all files, ignoring timestamps (including unstamped) : Default is only to transfer files not found in the destination : or files having a more recent timestamp : than their counterparts in the destination -Non : non-stamped files as considered for backing up as well : Default is only to consider backing up time-stamped files -Only : Transfer only files having a parent with one of the given names -X : Exclude files having a parent with one of the given names : In the case of a conflict, directories will be excluded -Help : Produce this message -Id : Give program identity and version number -Floppy :to use a floppy drive other than 0 -Verify :verify each floppy after archiving to it For example to archive the contents of :4.Documents and all its subdirectories except for one called OldDocs you could use *far -put -dirs :4.Documents -X OldDocs The program would then repeatedly prompt you to insert each of the discs from any previous archives that you are still keeping, (in order to avoid rearchiving any programs that have not changed). Please insert disc x of previous archive and press SPACE BAR OR insert first destination disc for this archive and press RETURN x would start at 1 and increment by 1 for each prompt until RETURN rather than space bar was pressed. If the destination disc was filled the program would prompt you for additional destination discs (allowing reformatting if blank) with the prompt Please insert destination disc x and press SPACE BAR. To restore only the subdirectory Memos from the archive to a directory :5.Memos you could use *far -get -dirs :5.Memos -BDirs Memos This would prompt you for each source disc with Please insert source disc x and press SPACE BAR. location: latest version available from John Thackray -Nick