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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Can I Protect My Hard Drive From Myself?
Message-ID: <946@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 27 Dec 89 12:28:54 GMT
Lines: 67
Return-Path: <lpami!lphillips>
To: van-bc!rnews

In <842@dsacg2.UUCP>, nor1675@dsacg2.UUCP (Michael Figg) writes:
>In article <11117@venera.isi.edu>, schur@venera.isi.edu (Sean Schur) writes:
>> 
>>I know that one solution would be to pre-format disks so that MRBackup wouldn't
>> try to format my hard disk erroneously. Unfortunately, I have a lot of ANIM 
>
>After doing somewhat the same thing (I did a format on dh0:  instead of df0:) I
>thought a good solution might be to hide the 'format' command under another
>name and call it from a script or simple program (named 'format') that traps
>the device to be formatted, checks to see if it is one of your hard disk
>partitions, and either warns you or forbids you to format the undesired
>partition.
>
>I haven't tried this yet (but have made good backups!) and would welcome any
>ideas on potential problems with this setup.

If you like this sort of thing, it's easy to do in ARexx.  Here's a simple
example. You can fiddle with it and make it as smart as you want. If you are
not using WShell, you will need to change the calls to C:FORMAT to

address command 'c:format' x

A real paranoid would put format in another directory and perhaps under a
different name, just in case some nasty trojan horse calls it.

-----------------------------------
/* format - front end for the format command */

parse arg x

if find('DH2: DH1: DH0:',translate(word(x,2))) > 0 then
	call refuse
if find('FF2: FF1: FF0:',translate(word(x,2))) > 0 then
	call warning
'c:format' x
exit

refuse:
	say
	say 'Better use C:FORMAT if you really mean it!'
	call whew
	exit

warning: procedure expose x
	say
	say 'Are you really sure you want to format' word(x,2) || '?'
	pull response
	if translate(response) = 'YES' then
		'c:format' x
	else
		nop

whew:
			say 'Whew! That was close. Send Larry a dollar.'

------------------------
-larry


--
" All I ask of my body is that it carry around my head."
         - Thomas Alva Edison -
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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