RESTORE
*******
Last updated by Roedy Green on 2007-03-11
by Dan Wright and Roedy Green
Restore.com is now free.
HISTORY
*******
In the thousands of copies of the earlier "Charware" version of
the program so far distributed I received one card from a decent
Englishman who donated to preserve the stately homes of England.
I received one other from a doctor in Czechoslovakia who donated
$90 to the Red Cross.
On the other hand, Rockwell, a major US defense contractor, is
using the program. They are using it to distribute their
software. I refused them permission to use it, but they are
using it anyway. Needless to say, those bastards made no
donation to a charity.
This is a pretty poor record. This version is no longer
Charware; it is Freeware. It is now a free program.
RESTORE was written in an emergency in a few days before
Christmas 1986 to allow BBL/Abundance diskettes in
BACKUP/RESTORE format to be restored to any machine, but it has
more universal application. Because of the short time frame of
its development, and because my phone was ringing off the hook
during that time, the orginal version had rough edges.
The new version has been reasonably thoroughly tested with
Periscope under MS-DOS 3.2, and MS-DOS 3.3 and has had
cursory testing under MS-DOS 4.01, PC-DOS 3.1, PC-DOS 3.2
and PC-DOS 3.3, DOS 5.0, DOS 6.0, DOS 6.2, DOS 6.22 and
DOS 7.0, and had thorough testing under PC-DOS 2.0 and
2.1. If you have trouble with other versions please let
me know know so I can repair the problems. I GIVE PHONE
SUPPORT ONLY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE REGISTERED, HOWEVER.
it his highly unlikely you will find a bug in restore. so far,
no one but me ever has. 99% OF THE TIME YOUR PROBLEM IS ALREADY
COVERED IN THE MANUAL. If you phone me before reading the
documentation, I will probably bite your head off. If however,
you do find a true bug, I will be most grateful to learn of it.
TROUBLE SHOOTING
****************
>> RESTORE CHUGS THROUGH ALL THE DISKS, BUT RESTORES NO FILES
This problem has several different causes. Basically you asked
RESTORE to restore some files that are not on the floppies. See
below for finding out what the files on your floppies ARE
called. You must use the SAME name that the files had
originally on the hard disk. You cannot restore them to a
different directory. See below for more details. Sometimes the
default directory gets you. To avoid confusion, do a CD \ to
start to put yourself in the root as the default directory. See
below for more detail. Sometimes you might not even be using my
version of RESTORE. See below for more detail on how to be
sure. Sometimes you might be using / where you should be using \ and
vice versa. Again see below for more detail.
>> ATTEMPTS TO RENAME
Restore has the same limitations as DOS restore. When you
restore a file you must restore it to the SAME directory with
the SAME filename as it was when you backed it up. You can
restore to a different DRIVE, but everything else must remain
the same.
People try things like this:
RESTORE A: C:\MYNEW\NEW.TXT
Nothing happens. Why? There is no file on the floppies called
C:\MYNEW\MYNEW.TXT. It was backed up under the name
C:\MYOLD\MYOLD.TXT.
>> FORGETTING WHAT IS ON A BACKUP SET
If you do not remember what the files are called on your backup
diskettes, try this:
RESTORE A: C:\*.* /S /P
IF YOU ARE IN DOUBT ABOUT HOW TO USE RESTORE, TRY THE ABOVE.
This way RESTORE will attempt to restore every file, and will
prompt you with each file name so that you can bypass restoring
it if you wish.
Another method is to use a hex file browser to examine the
diskettes directly. Information on the record layouts is in the
source code for RESTORE.ASM.
>> RESTORE TO THE SAME DIRECTORY
DOS RESTORE cannot restore files to a different directory from
the one they were in when they were backed up. Neither can CMP
RESTORE. Sometimes people attempt to type the name of a new
different directory they would like the files to move to, then
wonder why RESTORE says there are no matching files to restore.
RESTORE will let you restore to a different DRIVE that you backed
up from however. You can backup from C: and restore to D:.
Haven't you heard this before? Yes, you have, but so many people
miss this point and phone me up, I thought if I put it in twice you
might catch it.
>> WATCH OUT FOR THE DEFAULT DIRECTORY
Because RESTORE pays attention to the default subirectory,
RESTORE A: C:*.*
will restore files in the current directory -- NOT the root.
To get the root either:
CD \
RESTORE A: C:*.*
or
RESTORE A: C:\*.*
If you did this:
CD \Mydir
RESTORE A: C:*.*
and if there were no files on the floppies backed up from
\MyDir, then RESTORE would tell you there were NO files to
restore. RESTORE will NOT restore files backed up from the root
into C:\MyDir. RESTORE always puts files into the directory
they came from originally.
>> WRONG VERSION
Another common problem is to accidentally use the original
defective DOS RESTORE rather than this new version. This
version announces itself with a banner than is distinctly
different from the standard DOS version. It has little
rainbow-like flashes like this:
氨槽 Canadian Mind Products 鄄卑
>> DAMAGED HARD DISK
Most problems with my version of RESTORE can be traced to a
damaged DOS on hard disk -- usually having the system files from
one version of DOS and Command.Com from another. To repair a
damaged DOS, boot from the floppy master DOS disk, type:
SYS C:
COPY A:COMMAND.COM C:
then reboot.
>> SLASH VERSUS BACKSLASH
Usually you should use C: and CD \ commands prior to using
RESTORE. Make sure you have not added or deleted any spaces on
the RESTORE command line. Make sure the use of \ and / on the
command line is correct: e.g. RESTORE A: C:\*.*/S/P
I have received many calls from people who could not tell the
difference between a slash (/) and a backslash (\). RESTORE
wants the switches on the C: NOT the A: DO NOT BE INVENTIVE.
RESTORE IS PICKY JUST LIKE THE "REAL" DOS RESTORE.
>> TSR TROUBLE
If you still have trouble, get rid of any TSR (Terminate and
Stay Resident) programs from your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Particularly suspect are programs that speed up hard disk
access.
>> ATTEMPTS TO RENAME
Restore has the same limitations as DOS restore. When you
restore a file you must restore it to the SAME directory with
the SAME filename as it was when you backed it up. You can
restore to a different DRIVE, but everything else must remain
the same.
People try things like this:
RESTORE A: C:\MYNEW\NEW.TXT
Nothing happens. Why? There is no file on the floppies called
C:\MYNEW\MYNEW.TXT. It was backed up under the name
C:\MYOLD\MYOLD.TXT.
SAMPLES OF USE
**************
RESTORE A: C:\*.* /S /P
RESTORE A: C:\*.* /S
RESTORE A: C:\MySub\MyFile.Ext
RESTORE A: C:\MySub\*.*/P/S/Q
RESTORE A: C:\MySub/P
RESTORE A: C:\MySub
RESTORE A: \MySub -- presumes default drive
RESTORE A: C:*.* -- presumes default directory
RESTORE A: C:\*.BAT/S -- restores all BAT files in all
subdirectories.
FEATURES
********
CMP RESTORE replaces MS-DOS or PC-DOS RESTORE utility. It
works under all versions of DOS and all versions of
Windows including Windows 95. This version of RESTORE was
written from scratch without using reverse engineering
techniques to examine the commercial version code. All
knowledge of how DOS RESTORE works was gleaned by
examining hex dumps of files prepared by DOS BACKUP. I
hope Microsoft and IBM are not too angry with me for doing
this. If I go to jail for violating some bizarre
copyright law, I hope some of you come to visit me in
prison.
RESTORE is a direct replacement for MS/PC DOS 2.0 through
4.01 It works with DOS 5.0 through 7.0. However, it
cannot read the disks prepared with DOS 6.0 through 7.0
backup. Those diskettes must be restored with DOS 6.0
BACKUP. To prepare diskettes under DOS 6.0 that my
RESTORE can handle, use SETVER to fool the DOS 5.0 backup.
DOS 7.0/Windows 95 comes with a copy of the old DOS 5.0
BACKUP, but you must specially install it from the CD ROM.
Microsoft told me they had 22 reported bugs in BACKUP/RESTORE.
This version of RESTORE fixes the bugs (real or imagined) that
exist in the commercial versions:
1. Will properly create subdirectories automatically.
Under certain conditions the commercial versions fail
to do so.
2. Will accept diskettes from versions of DOS that use
either / or \ in the backup preambles. MS-DOS 3.2
BACKUP puts / instead of \ in its filenames. IBM PC-DOS 3.2
RESTORE refuses to understand them. Take your pick whose
fault it is.
3. Will read diskettes created MS or PC DOS 2.0 thru 4.01 and
run under any level of DOS 2.0 thru 4.01
4. It will not accidentally let you restore
IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS or COMMAND.COM
5. It does not get stack overflow errors.
6. It properly handles restoring of system, hidden and
read/only files.
7. It properly considers the default drive and default
subdirectory.
8. It will handle mixed upper/lower case in the command line.
9. It can read the dates produced by Zenith BACKUP.
Zenith RESTORE cannot read the diskettes produced by
Zenith BACKUP. I consider this bug criminal negligence.
My RESTORE is not as elaborate as the commercial versions; only
the /S and /P switches are supported.
/P means Pause for verification.
/Q means Quiet -- no advertising banner.
/S means restore Subdirectories as well.
This version has a few improvements over the commercial versions:
1. You get more than one chance to get the right diskette inserted.
2. RESTORE tells you which diskette you have inserted as well as
what it wants.
3. The error messages are more friendly.
4. The code is much smaller so it loads and executes more quickly.
5. It asks for additional confirmation before restoring
read/only, system or hidden files.
This version has the following shortcomings that can be blamed mainly
on the format BACKUP uses:
1. If you insert a backup diskette from a different set,
RESTORE will not notice and will go nuts.
2. To restore a file on diskette 7 you have
to feed through diskettes 1 through 6 first, unless
you know through ESP it is on diskette 7.
There is no master directory to the diskette set.
3. Every file on the backup diskettes must be opened and
examined before we can decide if it should be restored or not.
This makes restoring only one file in a set agonizingly slow.
4. If any portion of a file is unreadable or lost, you have lost
all of the file.
5. If the directory is not in strict order, things will
not work. If someone copied files one by one to a
different floppy, the directory may not be in the same
order. RESTORE must first process the outstanding file
from a previous floppy. The last thing it must do is process
a file continued on another floppy. It depends on the
directory being in order for this to work.
This version has the following shortcomings that can be blamed
mainly on my laziness:
1. If you abort, the file in the middle of being restored
will not automatically be deleted. It will be corrupt.
At least this lets you recover part of a damaged backup.
We call this a feature.
2. It presumes the source drive diskette is removable and the
target is not.
3. The error messages use informal language.
RESTORE has a personality a little like a Jewish mother.
4. It does not handle all the switches.
It does not recognize /A:date/B:date/E:time/L:time/M/N
5. If it gets I/O errors, it gives up rather than trying to
carry on the best it can.
6. It has not been tested on all versions of DOS.
7. It has not been tested with pathologically long
file names and default directories.
SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTION
*********************
RESTORE can also be used to distribute multi-disk software
packages or databases. In the source code RESTORE.ASM is a
equate switch called INSTALLING that customizes the banner,
error messages and prompts to be more suitable for installing
large software packages. This way you can prepare your
distribution masters with any version of DOS RESTORE, and rest
assured they will restore to any hardware. Only registered
users get the source code and hence access to this feature. If
you combine this technique with PKZip compression, you can
still further cut down the number of diskettes you need to
distribute, and simplify the installation.
GETTING THE LATEST VERSION
==========================
Look for the latest version at my Web site:
http://mindprod.com
Restore is Freeware.
Roedy Green
Canadian Mind Products
#101 - 2536 Wark Street
Victoria, BC Canada V8T 4G8
tel:(250) 361-9093
mailto:roedyg@mindprod.com
http://mindprod.com
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