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From: awd@dbase.A-T.COM (Alastair Dallas)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: copying files within windows
Message-ID: <1991Mar21.183548.15281@dbase.A-T.COM>
Date: 21 Mar 91 18:35:48 GMT
References: <1157@bjcong.bj.co.uk>
Organization: Ashton-Tate, Inc.
Lines: 36

In article <1157@bjcong.bj.co.uk>, rkt@bjcong.bj.co.uk (RAKESH TANDON) writes:
> I'm about to write a windows installation program and would like
> to know the best way of copying files from floppy disk to hard disk.

The best way is to allocate as large a buffer as you can, and:

	/* software wheel #319 */
	while (filsiz > 0)
		{
		this = MIN(filsiz, bufsiz);
		read( 'this' many bytes );
		write( 'this' many bytes );
		filsiz -= this;
		}

'This' will be bufsiz until the last time.  'Bufsiz' should be a multiple
of 512.  You can get very fancy and request device parameters for the
disk(s) you're dealing with.  Ideally, you'd like to read and write
whole cylinders at a time, but it's not an ideal world--you might
spend so long thinking about it that you delay the overall performance.
Bufsiz's of 16k, 32k or 48k copy files very nicely.  Note that this
basic loop can handle splitting large files across several floppies--
just don't close the output file.

As an alternative, you could WinExec command.com and 'copy', which is 
a highly optimized command.  Or, you could do your installation as a .bat
file the way a lot of people do :-).

Hope it helps.

/alastair/

-- 
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