Diskcopy--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 formats 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

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. Note that you currently cannot lock the current drive, but diskcopy requires that a drive be locked before copying files.

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 information at once. The diskcopy command reads from the source disk, writes to the destination disk, and prompts you to insert the source disk again. This process continues until the entire disk has been copied.

Avoiding disk fragmentation

Because diskcopy makes an exact copy of the source disk on the destination 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 fragmented.

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.

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 command.

More Information About Diskcopy

Diskcopy--Example

Diskcopy