jlh@loral.UUCP (A Casual Observer) (10/25/85)
I have a couple of questions about MS-DOS 2.11. First off, is there any
way to name a disk except when you format it? I format boxes of disks
at a time and have no way of knowing what will later be on that disk. It
seems silly to me that I can't re-name a disk when I put programs on it,
so I must be missing the MS DOS command to do it.
Second, does anyone know of a disk cataloging program? This will preferably
read a directory, then save the name of the disk and it's contents. Later
I want to be able to say "where is my frobnigozz.c program that I quit working
on 6 months ago?" and have it say "your program is on the disk labeled fred".
It would also be nice if it would say "the disk labeled fred is currently
under the couch", but I can live without this feature. Another thing I would
like it to do is tell me all the programs I have, with several sorting options
like alphabetic order, sort by time, sort by post-fix (.c, .com, etc), sort
by catagory (editor, compiler, game, etc).
Thanks for reading this, and mucho gracias if you respond.
Jim
Jim Harkins
Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
{ucbvax, ittvax!dcdwest, akgua, decvax, ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcc6!loral!jlhjohnl@ima.UUCP (10/28/85)
> I have a couple of questions about MS-DOS 2.11. First off, is there any > way to name a disk except when you format it? Under DOS 2.x, no. They finally got around to adding a disk labelling program in DOS 3.0. The Norton Utilities include a disk labeller, and if you are really using boxes of floppies, you probably should get a copy to repair scruffled disks anyway. > Second, does anyone know of a disk cataloging program? The IBM Personally Developed Software catalog has such a program for about $20. It probably works -- everything else I've tried from that catalog does. Call 1-800-IBM-PCSW to get the catalog. It also occurs to me that for the cost of about 25 or 30 boxes of floppies, you could get yourself a hard disk and avoid much of this trouble. John Levine, ima!johnl
rde@ukc.UUCP (R.D.Eager) (10/29/85)
Something about disk labelling.
It is fairly easy to write a program to label a disk (they abound on
BBSs and I have one I can post if it is really required). No, MS-DOS
doesn't seem to include one in the normal release; probably because
there are problems (I think due to a bug (yes, another one)) in MS-DOS.
The way you label a disk is to create a directory entry (in the root
directory) with the 'volume label' bit set. This is fairly
easy. However, if you change the label later on (by either removing it
completely or by deleting it then creating a new one) the chances are
you will trash a few files. The behaviour of MS-DOS in this area is
*weird*. I can see no rhyme or reason for the mess that is made of the
disk (something like the first eight FAT entries are trashed).
What's more, it isn't even an unsupported feature; it's actually in the
manual so Microsoft haven't got that cop-out this time. Still, it
wouldn't do to produce reliable software all the time - would it?
--
Bob Eager
rde@ukc.UUCP
rde@ukc
...!mcvax!ukc!rde
Phone: +44 227 66822 ext 75892212msr@whuts.UUCP (ROBIN) (11/02/85)
> > Something about disk labelling. > > It is fairly easy to write a program to label a disk (they abound on > BBSs and I have one I can post if it is really required). No, MS-DOS > doesn't seem to include one in the normal release; probably because > there are problems (I think due to a bug (yes, another one)) in MS-DOS. > > The way you label a disk is to create a directory entry (in the root > directory) with the 'volume label' bit set. This is fairly > easy. However, if you change the label later on (by either removing it > completely or by deleting it then creating a new one) the chances are > you will trash a few files. The behaviour of MS-DOS in this area is > *weird*. I can see no rhyme or reason for the mess that is made of the > disk (something like the first eight FAT entries are trashed). > > What's more, it isn't even an unsupported feature; it's actually in the > manual so Microsoft haven't got that cop-out this time. Still, it > wouldn't do to produce reliable software all the time - would it? > -- > Bob Eager > > rde@ukc.UUCP > rde@ukc > ...!mcvax!ukc!rde > > Phone: +44 227 66822 ext 7589 *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** DOS 3.0 includes disk label function, whic appears to work correctly!