huff@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu (Edward J. Huff) (06/27/91)
I needed to quickly copy about 3 45meg cartridges onto a large hard drive, use the data there, then copy it all back to the cartridges, and erase it from the large hard drive. Using SUM partition, I created partitions on the cartridges, leaving a little space free. I made the partition files visible and named them to reflect the volume names. Then I wrote a quick and dirty application that opens the partition file, creates a contiguous file on the hard drive, and copies it using a 5 meg buffer. Then it renames the original partition file by appending " copied" to the name. I used full path names for all files, etc. because I am not yet expert at doing Mac user interface programming. So I just built two copies for each cartridge, one named "from n" and one named "to n", where n is the cartridge number. These two applications are copied onto the cartridge (outside of the SUM partition). To copy a cartridge to the hard drive, you mount it, double click on the "from n" application, and wait a minute or two. (MUCH faster than copying individual files, especially since there are a lot of them). To copy it back, you dismount the SUM partitions, mount the cartridge, drag the "copied" partition file to trash, double click on the "to n" application, and wait another minute or two. You have to close the hard disk window and reopen it before finder will notice the name change on the newly "copied" partition file, which can then be trashed. It seems like other people might need something like this. Not everyone has SUM partition, and it isn't 7 compatible. Is there a PD partition file program without all the bells and whistles of SUM but which works reliably? Is there anyone out there who would like to discuss design (how should this thing really work?) or to assist in implementing a releaseable version? I don't have the time to polish it up. I think it would be a good idea to inhibit mounting the partitions when they are on the cartridge, since this could lead to major confusion if you mounted both copies at the same time. That is easy, just use a different creator code/file type when creating the file on the cartridge so that SUM partition won't recognize the file when it is on the cartridge.