Diskcopy

Using disks

Diskcopy 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 nonremovable 

The diskcopy command prompts you to insert the source and destination disks and waits for you to press any key on the keyboard 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.

Using one drive for copying

If drive1 and drive2 are the same, diskcopy prompts you to switch disks. If you omit both Drive parameters and the current disk drive is a floppy disk drive, diskcopy prompts you each time you need to 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. Diskcopy reads from the source disk, writes to the destination disk, and prompts you to insert the source disk again. This process continues until you have copied the entire disk.

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 process of finding, reading, or writing files. To avoid transferring fragmentation from one disk to another, use copy or xcopy to copy your disk. Because copy and xcopy copy files sequentially, the new disk is not fragmented.

 Warning

Understanding diskcopy exit codes

The following table lists each exit code and a brief description.

To process exit codes returned by diskcomp, you can use the errorlevel on the if command line in a batch program. For an example of a batch program that processes exit codes, see diskcomp in Related Topics.