Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!execu!sequoia!rpp386!aubrey From: aubrey@rpp386.cactus.org (Aubrey McIntosh) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Making Backups Message-ID: <18123@rpp386.cactus.org> Date: 11 Mar 90 03:48:52 GMT References: <345@nbivax.nbi.dk> Reply-To: aubrey@rpp386.UUCP (Aubrey McIntosh) Organization: vima, Austin TX Lines: 40 In article <345@nbivax.nbi.dk> anderswp@nbivax.nbi.dk writes: >Some time ago, I purchased Minix v.1.3 in the 512K AT-version. However, Until >now I haven't had time do anything with it and now I face a problem: > >Before doing anything else I would like to make a backup of the disks as >I do not trust myself with playing around with them without screwing them up. >I thought that this could be done with MSDOS DISKCOPY but this does not work. >Do I have do this from within Minix? Running Minix without harddisk would I >have to copy a bit to the RAM-disk, then on to the backup disk etc. for >the entire set of disks? Somebody please tell me that this is not true. > "This is not true." The first block of a Minix filesystem disk is not currently used by minix. One possibility open to you, if you are willing to drive MS-debug, is to create or copy the disk parameters in the boot record. These are described on page 113 of Norton "programmer's guide to the ibm pc" ISBN 0-914845-46-2 or ISBN 0-14-087-144-6 (both numbers appear on the title page I'm reading right now. Thought they were unique until this minute.) When you have done that, MS-diskcopy will work. Alternatively, you can start Norton's Utilities in (perhaps) maintenance mode, do a sector copy, and tell it just what the description of the disk is. Although I did get Norton's utilities to work doing this, I don't know exactly how I did it without going back to some notes. I suppose one could write an assembly program using int-13 in just a page or so to do this, also. -- Aubrey McIntosh "Find hungry samurai." -- The Old Man 1502 Devon Circle comp.os.minix, comp.lang.modula2 Austin, TX 78723 1-(512)-452-1540 (v)