Full-Back v1.0 The Maximal-Fill File Copier August 10, 1991 Copyright (c) 1991 Josh Coalson All Rights Reserved ShareWare Notice ============================================================================ Full-Back v1.0 is made available under the "ShareWare" concept. You may distribute the programs as long as the archive contains the four files listed in "Full-Back Files" below. If you find this program useful you are asked to send the author a license fee of $5. All comments and suggestions would also be appreciated. Josh Coalson 301 N. West Anaheim, CA 92801 Kandy Shack: (714) 636-2667 The Cookie Jar: (714) 997-0350 Black Pine: (714) 539-9374 Punkin Duster: (714) 522-3980 Motown L.A. BBS: (714) 535-1319 Full-Back Files ============================================================================ The following files are included in Full-Back v1.0: FB.EXE The command-line version of Full-Back. FULLBACK.EXE The interactive version of Full-Back. README.DOC This file, containing basic information about Full-Back and the use of the command-line version. FULLBACK.DOC Documentation for the interactive version and how to use its many features. What is Full-Back? ============================================================================ At the heart Full-Back lies just a file copier, but how it copies files is what makes it unique. From a given set of files, Full-Back is able to determine, through the use of a maximizing algorithm, which ones will fill the disk fullest! Unlike those programs which clumsily copy the largest files first and don't use all available space, Full-Back knows before copying how to minimize the wasted space on the floppy. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to fill up a floppy to capacity and how often you'll see "0 bytes free." Also, remember that files aren't split, compressed, or written in an odd format. All files are copied onto floppy just as they would be with the DOS COPY command. Using Full-Back ============================================================================ There are two versions of Full-Back provided. The first, FB.EXE, is the command line version. It works very much like the DOS COPY command, and is documented below. The second version, FULLBACK.EXE, contains many powerful features for people who do heavy-duty backups, like SysOps. This second version is fully interactive and can handle any backup task. FULLBACK.EXE is documented in the file FULLBACK.DOC. Basically, Full-Back works like the DOS COPY command, except that it can take more than one source file specification. In other words, if COPY could work like this: COPY *.EXE *.COM A: then the usage of Full-Back and COPY would be the same. When you enter, for example, something like: FB *.EXE *.COM A: Full-Back looks at all .EXE and .COM files and determines which will fill the floppy in A: best. Once it has found the optimum fit, the files are copied. If there are more .EXE and .COM files than the first disk can hold, Full-Back will ask for another disk to be placed in A:, and then it will fill the new disk, choosing from the remaining .EXE and .COM files. This will continue until all the .EXE and .COM files have been copied. It is very likely that every disk except the last will have "0 bytes free" ! You can enter any number of source file specifications, and they can contain any valid DOS path attached, even be on different drives. The destination can have a path too, provided the directory already exists on the floppy. For example, the following will work just fine with Full-Back: C:\TEST>FB B:\*.GIF ..\*.* \BATS\*.BAT A:\NEWFILES providing that the floppy in A: has the directory NEWFILES already on it. Moving Instead of Copying with Full-Back ============================================================================ Files can be moved instead of copied onto the destination drive by putting a "/m" before the source files. For example: FB /m *.exe a: tells Full-Back to copy .EXE files to A: and then delete the files it has copied off of the source drive. The Interactive Version of Full-Back ============================================================================ The interactive version of Full-Back has many extra features, including full attribute-bit control and masking, point-and-shoot tagging of files to be copied, and the ability to add volume labels to floppies. All are fully interactive and fully configurable. For detailed documentation on this version, see FULLBACK.DOC.