★ APPLICATIONS ★ DISQUE ★ Archiver ★ |
| Archiver (Computing With the Amstrad) | Applications Disque |
Back up your discs - and free valuable space Nick Hinde describes Archiver, a disc to tape spooler for the CPC WITH most computer systems in commercial use there is a facility to back-up program and data files to some form of tape device and have the option to restore the disc at a later date. This provides a fairly reliable back-up for important or archived data and also frees expensive disc space. Archiver is a program for the Amstrad CPC series which will allow whole discs to be recorded on tape and restored at a later date. If the disc to be archived is fairly full it is a good idea to use a larger than normal cassette, such as a C60, for dumping the data, otherwise you may run out of tape halfway through. The program is designed to work on system discs, but it could be altered for data discs quite easily by those who wish to modify the sector numbers. When restoring a disc from tape it is important to use a disc which has nothing valuable on it as the first thing Archiver does when restoring is to wipe the disc on to which the tape data is going to be loaded. To use the routine first type in the Basic program. Program I, and save it. If you have an assembler for the machine code use the source listing -Program II - and save the object code as Maincode with the origin at &9076 - the code length is &8B. If you do not have an assembler type in Program III, save it and run it to produce the machine code, which will automatically be saved to disc as Maincode. When you run Program I it will load the machine code and ask you for the date. It then gives you the options to archive or restore a disc. If you choose option 1 - archive a disc - it will ask for the disc to be archived to be installed in the drive, and a tape to be put in the cassette. It will read the disc and check for empty spaces and write this information to the tape. Next it will read all the bytes from the useful sectors in a maximum of 45 sector chunks and save them to tape. • Bear in mind that when you delete a file from a disc you only remove its name from the directory. The program will still be physically there on the disc, although inaccessible, and the sectors it occupies will be read as live during the archiving process. If you choose option 2 - restore a disc — the program will ask for the archive cassette and a spare disc, and will then wipe the disc and read the tape for the sector data. It then restores the new disc to the same state as when originally archived.
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