df.txt

Due to an increase in demand for and questions about direct disk access for Micrososft platforms, a

DF

usage: df [-{options}] <file> <drive>
       df [-{options}] <drive> <file>

write file to floppy, or write floppy to file

options:    r  reset drive before and after
            v  verify disk writes
            z  zero buffers before reads
            k  keep writing even if errors
            l  read disk up to last allocated cluster (FAT disks only)
            s  write system tracks of disk to file (FAT disks only)
            n  do not ask for confirmation (unless to overwrite file)

DF is a RAWRITE program to write a file to a floppy disk, that also
can write a floppy to a file, and has more options.

The 'z' option might be useful with the 'k' option so that when a disk
read error occurs, sectors unable to be read will be zero filled. (The
disk to file function along with '-k' will be useful to recover data
from damaged disks.)

The 'l' option will be very useful when writing a disk to a file -- if
you want to distribute a (FAT) boot disk that is not full, it will
save file space.

With the 's' option only the (FAT) disk's system data is written. Not
terribly useful except for a true quick format when writing the file
back to a disk. (Microsoft's "quick format" feature fails on non-DOS
formated disks; quite strange...) BUG: the data written is up to the
track and head that the ROOT is on; so this option is really only
useful on a blank disk.

The other options should be fairly obvious.

DF does all disk I/O via INT 13h (will the exception of getting some
DOS FORMAT information when -l is used) a track at a time. If an I/O
error occurs on a track, DF will then access the track a sector at a
time, displaying some '.'s to indicate that, and 'x's to indicate the
bas sector. DF does not yet retry the sector accesses (next version
perhaps).


19-Nov-1998
Gregg Jennings
This program is part of The DISK LIBrary.
http://www.diskwarez.com/disklib.htm