diskcopy(CMD) 19 June 1992 diskcopy(CMD) Name diskcopy - copy contents of floppy disk Syntax diskcopy [drive1: [drive2:]] [/1] [/v] Description This command determines the number of sides to copy based on the source drive and disk. discopy copies the contents of the floppy disk in the source drive to a formatted or unformatted floppy disk in the destination drive. diskcopy destroys the existing contents of the destination disk as it copies the new information to it" Parameters drive1: Specifies the drive containing the source disk. drive2: Specifies the drive containing the destination disk. Switches /1 Copies only the first side of a disk. /v Verifies that the information is copied correctly. Use of this switch slows the copying process. Notes Invalid drive for diskcopy The diskcopy command works only with removable disks, such as floppy disks. You cannot use diskcopy with a hard disk. If you specify a hard disk drive for drive1 or drive2, diskcopy displays the following error message: Invalid drive specification Specified drive does not exist or is non-removable diskcopy messages The diskcopy command prompts you to insert the source and destination disks and waits for you to press any key before continuing. After copying, diskcopy displays the following message: Copy another diskette (Y/N)? If you press Y, diskcopy prompts you to insert source and destination disks for the next copy operation. To stop the diskcopy process, press N. If you are copying to an unformatted floppy disk in drive2, diskcopy for- mats the disk with the same number of sides and sectors per track as are on the disk in drive1. diskcopy displays the following message while it formats the disk and copies the files: Formatting while copying If the capacity of the source disk is greater than that of the destina- tion disk and your computer can detect this difference, diskcopy displays the following message: TARGET media has lower capacity than SOURCE Continue anyway (Y/N)? If you press Y, diskcopy attempts to format the destination disk and copy the files. Disk serial numbers If the source disk has a volume serial number, diskcopy creates a new volume serial number for the destination disk and displays the number when the copy operation is complete. Omitting drive parameters If you omit the drive2 parameter, diskcopy uses the current drive as the destination drive. If you omit both drive parameters, diskcopy uses the current drive for both. If the current drive is the same as drive1, diskcopy prompts you to swap disks as necessary. Using one drive for copying If drive1 and drive2 are the same, diskcopy prompts you whenever you should switch disks. If you omit both drive parameters and the current disk drive is a floppy disk drive, diskcopy prompts you each time you should insert a disk in the drive. If the disks contain more information than available memory can hold, diskcopy cannot read all of the informa- tion at once. diskcopy reads from the source disk, writes to the desti- nation disk, and prompts you to insert the source disk again. This pro- cess continues until the entire disk has been copied. Avoiding disk fragmentation Because diskcopy makes an exact copy of the source disk on the destina- tion disk, any ``fragmentation'' on the source disk is transferred to the destination disk. Fragmentation is the presence of small areas of unused disk space between existing files on a disk. A fragmented source disk can slow down the finding, reading, or writing of files. To avoid transferring fragmentation from one disk to another, use either the copy command or the xcopy command to copy your disk. Because copy and xcopy copy files sequentially, the new disk is not frag- mented. _________________________________________________________________________ CAUTION You cannot use xcopy to copy a startup disk. _________________________________________________________________________ diskcopy exit codes The following list briefly describes the meaning of each diskcopy exit code (errorlevel): 0 The copy operation was successful. 1 A nonfatal read/write error occurred. 2 The user pressed CtrlC to stop the process. 3 A fatal hard error occurred. 4 An initialization error occurred. You can use the errorlevel parameter on the if command line in a batch program to process exit codes returned by diskcopy. For an example of a batch program that processes exit codes, see the diskcomp(CMD) command. Related commands For information about copying one or more files, see the copy(CMD) com- mand. For information about copying directories and subdirectories, see the xcopy(CMD) command.