TOOLS TO TAKE THE "HARD" OUT OF HARD DRIVE by Dick Estel (DickEstel@Worldnet.att.net) PROGRAMS COVERED: EZ LOADER DEDIT PARTITION VIEW ("part.128 v3.1") HD-TOOLS PARTITION PRINT FCOPY & M COPY CMD PARTVIEW.V4 HD POWER TOOLS NOTIME.BAS New hardware requires new tools. The invention of the automobile lead to the development of everything from the electric starter to the high-tech computerized equipment now used for most auto repair diagnoses. The computer world is no different. The change from tape drives to disk drives as the prime storage media for Commodore lead to the development of all kinds of disk management and drive checking software. And the acquisition of a large capacity storage device such as a CMD hard drive requires the use of ever more sophisticated versions of these programs, as well as some specialized new ones. I've been enjoying my 40 megabyte CMD HD for about two years now--but without some of the programs described in this article, using it would often be a headache instead of a joy. HD TOOLS Before you can do much with your new hard drive, you need to create some partitions and subdirectories where you can save your work. CMD provides the programs to accomplish this, HD-TOOLS.128 and HD-TOOLS.64. Both function identically. Upon loading the program, you see a list of options, which include changing the default device number or the default partition, viewing a list of existing partitions, deleting an old partition, or adding a new one. Once the device and partition defaults are set, you probably won't change them often. The other options come in handy when you set up or reorganize your drive. Listing the partition table shows the partition number, its name, size in blocks, and type. The latter includes 1581, 1571 and 1541 emulation partitions, native, 1581 CP/M, print buffer, and foreign (for non-Commodore drives). The print buffer partitions are not usable by the current system, but there are plans to allow their use as a buffer so that data can be sent to the printer, and you can get back to work. The manual states that this will be implemented in a future version of the HD DOS program. Use of foreign partitions requires appropriate software on the other system. If you select "create a partition," you are presented with a display showing the first available partition number. You can press + or - to move to a different number, or RETURN to choose the one displayed. Next you select the type. If you choose an emulation partition, the size is automatically set. For native partitions, you select the size, in 256 block increments. After this you enter a name, and you have the option to write the new partition to the drive, or abort the process. The "delete" option does just what it sounds like. EZ LOADER Once you have partitions, subdirectories and files set up, a menu program of some kind is a must. I have hundreds of programs scattered over 50 partitions. I can easily remember where to find the Write Stuff, GEOS and my copy program. Finding programs I use less often could be a real challenge. The menu program I use is called EZ Loader, written by Dave Schmoll. This menu can be set up to access programs on any drive, partition, or subdirectory. In the menu interface, you can give the program a meaningful name, regardless of the actual file name. Once you've added a program to the menu, all you do is place the cursor on the program name and press [RETURN]. For a thorough discussion of this program, see Scott Eggleston's review in issue #3 of The Underground, updated in issue #12. All I will say is that anyone who has a CMD large storage device MUST own EZ Loader. I WILL quote one comment from Scott's first review: "At first I was going to write about several menu systems available to us, but after using EZ Loader, I cannot recommend anything else." The more I work with it and review various items in the documentation, the more I appreciate the program. (The latest version is 3.3, and the registration cost is $20. Dave offers on-line support, and keeps registered users up to date on the latest changes.) DEDIT I've also found a directory sorting program to be a vital part of my tool box. Two great ones, David's Directory Designer and Directory Assistance, stand out for use with the 1541/71 drives. However, neither will work on 1581's or the hard drive (I'm sure this is also true of RAMLink and other similar devices). The best one I've found so far is "dedit128. v7.1" (also available in a similarly-named 64 version). The program is shareware, and a $5 donation is requested by author Jerome Yoner of Canada. Dedit allows automatic sorting of the entire directory, or a manual sort. In addition there is an option to pack the directory (eliminate "blank" spots where files have been deleted). The DOS wedge is fully supported, and a group of commands up to 255 characters can be sent by placing the English pound sign between each command. This is especially useful on the hard drive, where there may be several layers of subdirectories. Thus the command string "cp17^cd:correspondence^cd:family." would change to partition #17, and access the second level subdirectory "family," under the first level subdirectory "correspondence": Although the program is fast and relatively easy, I have several items on my wish list if there is an upgrade: I would like to be able to change the default colors, since I find some letter/background combinations hard to read. The two sort options require either sorting the entire directory, or moving one file name at a time in the manual sort. Some of the older programs allow moving a group of files, and sorting on a selected range. Clearly this could be implemented in a modern program. Even so, I am highly satisfied with the program, and use it regularly to keep my large word processing directories in alphabetical order. PARTITION VIEW Mr. Yoner has also provided us with another essential program, PARTITION VIEW ("part.128 v3.1"), a program for viewing and/or printing the partition information on the CMD HD, RamLink, and RamDrive. The 128 version supports viewing the information in 80 columns. The 64 & 128 versions allow printing the information in 80 columns. The choices offered from the main menu in this program are as follows: 1 - Read Partition Info 2 - Display Info 3 - Print Info 4 - Sort by Starting Block 5 - Sort by Partition Size 6 - Sort by Partition Number 7 - Sort by Partition Name 8 - Sort by Partition Type 9 - End Options 1 and 2 read in the partition data and display it, after which option 3 allows you to send it to the printer or the screen. The programs great strengths are in the sort choices, the most useful of which is #4, Starting Block. This lists the partitions in the order they were created. The value of this comes if you want to delete several partitions. Regardless of the numeric designation of the partitions, they are written to the drive in the order that you create them. If you remove the second partition of twenty on a HD, you will wait a LONG time while all the other partitions are moved up. Sorting by order of creation allows you to delete partitions in reverse order, greatly reducing the wait time. The utility of the other choices should be fairly clear, and will depend on your own needs. Note that the sorting process is just a listing, no changes are written to the drive. CMD PARTVIEW A similar C64-only program, CMD PARTVIEW.V4 by "Scormus" does essentially the same thing, but also allows sending the sorted list to a disk file. PARTITION PRINT Another useful program for keeping a record of what is on the drive is PARTITION PRINT. When run, the program prints to the screen or printer a list of all partitions by name and type. It then repeats the list, showing partition size and blocks free. Finally it goes through the list again, showing subdirectories and indicating whether the partition has a boot sector. It's a simple program, but very handy for making regular updated lists of what's on the drive. FCOPY and MCOPY Two other programs that come with the drive are FCOPY, a file copier, and MCOPY, a whole disk copier (the "m" stands for "mirror"). MCOPY is pretty much a basic, garden variety disk copier that recognizes emulation partitions and all Commodore compatible drives. The program automatically prevents attempts at copying between mis-matched drive types. FCOPY is well designed for use with large capacity, partitioned storage devices. It allows access to partitions and subdirectories, including partitions created on 1581 disks. Files to be copied can be limited by the usual wild card techniques, as well as by date. This is a particularly valuable feature. For example, when I'm ready to back up the new material on a Write Stuff subdirectory, I can specify files that were created or modified after a selected date (normally the date of the last backup). This makes the task of backing up the hard drive a simple one. As with most good copiers, you can toggle all files in a list to be copied, or select them individually. You then tell the program how to deal with existing file names on the target disk: bypass copying that file, replace, or ask. FCOPY is available via many BBS's and on-line services, and would be a useful file copier for anyone, whether you have a hard drive or not. HD POWER TOOLS A potentially useful program I have not really tested is HD POWER TOOLS, from CMD. This item lets you directly edit partition tables, which describe the parameters of the partition. You can change the type (such as native, 1581 emulation, 1541 emulation, etc.), the name, the start address, and the size. This allows the unwary and inexperienced user to totally destroy all data in a partition--which is why I have not tested these functions! Potentially more useful to the non-programmer is the ability to back up the partition table. Again, I did not fully test this function, and I do not have documentation for the program, but the apparent purpose is to allow you to restore the information defining your hard drive setup in case of a crash. I did use the SAVE function, which created a small USR file, but for obvious reasons I did not try the RESTORE option, which I assume writes the information back to the hard drive. Anyone feeling compelled to use this program should seek out the documentation! Wisely, the author gives you the chance to abort the proceedings at any point of danger. NAVAL OBSERVATORY TIME Finally, there is a convenient little file that makes it easy to precisely set the Hard Drive's clock (if glancing at your watch is not adequate). NOTIME.BAS is a dedicated terminal program which calls the U.S. Naval Observatory near Washington D.C., obtains the standard time, converts it to local time, sets the clock, and hangs up. I did have a problem with this file in that it would not function a second time after I had used it. However, I dissolved it from the original SFX file again, and the newly created program worked fine--once. Since I don't use the program often, it's not a big deal to dissolve it from the original each time I need it. But if anyone has the answer to this strange behavior, I'd love to hear about it. This program was featured on an Underware collection as "notime.sfx." (Underwear disks, a service of The Underground, were distributed by our own Tom Adams, who can no doubt still provide this file). All the programs mentioned here came from GEnie except those that were included with the drive and the Navel Time file. No doubt they are available at most Commodore FTP sites on The Internet and many bulletin board systems. Of course, there are many other programs designed for use with the hard drive and similar large capacity storage devices; and many others that are useful with it, though not specifically designed for it. These are the ones that have made my tool kit complete.