@database MDARexx.guide @master MDARexx.doc @node "main" "MDDisk 1.1 © Copyright 1991, 1992 John L. Jones" MDDisk 1.1 © Copyright 1991, 1992 John L. Jones All Rights Reserved. =============================================================== Using MDDisk =============================================================== About MDDisk MDDisk is the original Disk Copy/Format utility that was included within the original program, MegaD 1.00, and MegaD 1.01. When MegaD 1.10 was released, the code to create the internal Disk Copy/Format option of MegaD was removed from MegaD and MDDisk was created as a stand alone Copy/Format utility. MDDisk is to be distributed with the MegaD shareware archive ONLY. It is not intended to be distributed on it's own. There are other Copy/Format utilities for the Amiga Computer. They too can be used with MegaD. And to be honest with you, I use SuperDuper, written by Sebastiano Vigna. It's size is twice as large as that of MDDisk, but it's speed is also twice that of MDDisk. The point I am trying to make here is, MegaD can work with other Disk Copy/Format utilities. I have done very little work this time on MDDisk. My main push was to rewrite MegaD. MDDisk was only upgraded to be a little friendlier with the new Workbench 2.0. MDDisk is a very strait forward Copy/Format Utility. It does not try to do anything fancy to speed things up, but it will get the job done. For this reason, I have been told, MDDisk is more reliable than some of the other high speed Copy/Format programs. @{ " Starting MDDisk " link "Starting MDDisk"} @{ " Dual Copy " link "Dual Copy"} @{ " Buffered Copy " link "Buffered Copy"} @endnode @node "Starting MDDisk" Starting MDDisk MDDisk can be started from the Workbench, CLI, and from within MegaD. To start it from the CLI, change the current directory to the directory MDDisk is installed. Type: run MDDisk Workbench users should open the drawer to the MDDisk icon. Double click the icon with the left mouse button. MegaDs' defaults are preset to call MDDisk when the Copy/Format command is issued. By doing any of the above three options to start MDDisk, a window with a number of gadgets and options to select from. The gadgets on the left side of the window select the format options, the gadgets on the right selects the disk copy options. A large box is drawn around the group of gadgets that are active at the time, to show if you are in Format or Copy mode. To Select Format or Copy mode simply select anywhere by or on the gadgets assign to the mode that you want. On the format side there are four boolean gadgets to turn on and off the drives, the gadgets are titled DF0:, DF1:, DF2:, and DF3: for formatting disk. On the copy side there are eight boolean gadgets to select the target drive(s) and source drive(s). Target df0:, df1:, df2:, df3:, Source df0:, df1:, df2:, df3:. If you have more than two drives you can copy the one source disk to all other free drives if you wish, so if you have three drives you can make two copies of a disk at a time or if you have four drives you can make 3 copies of a disk at a time. @endnode @node "Dual Copy" Dual Copy If you should have four 3 1/2 drives attach to your Amiga, one more boolean gadget will be available. It will be titled "D C" for Dual Copy. This gadget will be found at the far right of the window towards the top. By selecting this gadget you will be able copy two disks at one time. Drive df0: and df1: will be match, drive df2: and df3: will be match. Each time you select the D C gadget it will toggle source and target drives. Below the main two sets of gadgets are four string gadgets. If you are in Format mode the strings will contain default names (Empty0, Empty1...) to name the newly formatted disk. The strings can be changed to any thing that you would like. If you are in Copy mode the newly copied disk will be renamed to any strings found in the corresponding string gadgets for the target drive. If the string gadget is empty the name of the copy will be unchanged. Careful! Two identical disk will crash the operating system if inserted into the drives while the Amiga operating system has control of the drives. Only gadgets that correspond to a mounted drive will be active, all others will be disabled. Also if copy is requested on a single drive, it will show the number of passes the copy will take and if you still want to continue. Below the group of string gadgets are three more gadgets. Exit, Start, and Abort. Exit will quit the program but not before checking for duplicate disk still in the drives. If it finds duplicate disk it will display a message and wait until the disk are removed. Start will initiate the Format(s) or Copy(s) that you have set up. The Abort gadget is disabled until a format or Copy is started. If for some reason you want to abort the process once it is started, just select this gadget. You will be greeted with a Yes or No request to see if you really do want to abort the process. Exit, Start and Abort can all be selected from the keyboard by pressing the first letter of the gadget. The Verify gadget is located at the top center of the window, it will read On or Off depending on the status of Verify. This will work on both Format and Copy. It is your choice, but be warned that your data is at stake if verify is off. It will not test if the disk is bad or if a write error has occurred. New to version 1.1 of MDDisk is the 'Date' gadget. It changes the date of the copied disk to the current system date. This minimizes the chance of crashing your system, due to two identical disks mounted on your disk drives. If the gadget is selected MDDisk will modify the dates during the copy. If it is not selected the copy of the source disk will be identical. At the bottom of the window there will be four grids with 80 squares in each grid, this represent the cylinders on the disk. Letters will be written to the squares as the copy or format proceeds. The letters and what they represent are: R = Read W = Write F = Format V = Verify @endnode @node "Buffered Copy" Buffered Copy MDDisk will buffer a full disk in your systems memory, if you have enough available. This way you can read a disk once and then make multiple copies of it on all of your available drives. The process to do this, is not readily apparent. To tell MDDisk to buffer a full volume, select one of the available drives as both the source and target drive. MDDisk will attempt to allocate enough memory from the system to buffer the full volume. Once the disk that you want to make duplicates of is in the source drive, select the Start gadget. After MDDisk reads the full disk, you will receive this message: Multiple Copies Possible Use all available drives for target drives? Answer Yes, and all mounted drives will turn into Target drives. You will then be instructed to insert disk into all drives and continue. You will be able to keep copping the buffered disk to all available drives as often as you want. @endnode