Ref: 03050023
Title: Copying Diskettes Using Linked Network Drives
Date:  07/31/91

Copyright 3Com Corporation, 1991.  All rights reserved.


The number of workstation PCs having dual diskette drives continues to
decline, as more and more capability is off-loaded onto servers, and many
workstations and servers possess only a single floppy drive.  However,
people still need to copy files from 3-1/2" to 5-1/4" floppies
and vice versa, or between two 5-1/4" floppies, or two 3-1/2" floppies,
perhaps with different densities.  Using the Microsoft LAN Manager with
PC servers having a diskette drive, transferrals can easily be done.

To copy entire floppy disks using linked floppy drives, link to either
two servers each having a single floppy drive, or to one server which
contains both of the needed diskette drives, or if your workstation
has one of the needed diskette drives, link to a server for the other.
Link virtual drives "x:" and "y:" to drives on the servers, as follows:

               NET USE x: \\server1\A$     (to link to A: on "server1")
               NET USE y: \\server2\A$     (to link to A: on "server2")

Drives "x:" and "y:" represent virtual drive letters of your choice.
If your workstation contains one of the needed diskette drives, omit the
latter of the NET USE's shown above.  If both floppy drives are to be
found on the SAME server, specify the same server name in both NET USE's
above, indicating "A$" for floppy drive "A:" and "B$" for drive "B:".

Insert the source diskette into the source diskette drive, and place
an (already formatted) destination floppy into the destination drive.
Copying of the contents of the source diskette to the destination
diskette can be accomplished using the DOS-OS/2 "XCOPY" command, i.e.:

               XCOPY x:\ y:\ /S /E

If a diskette drive located on your workstation is used as source or
destination, use its drive letter instead of "x:" or "y:" above, e.g.:

               XCOPY A:\ x:\ /S /E      (if source drive is on wksta.)
     or:       XCOPY x:\ A:\ /S /E      (if destination is on wksta.)

Note: if the destination diskette is to contain a bootable operating system
such as DOS, it must be pre-formatted (FORMAT a: /S) with DOS, and this must
be done locally, not via a linked network drive.  Then, if source and
destination diskettes are to contain different bootable versions of DOS,
make sure you do not copy an incorrect version of COMMAND.COM by using a
general reference to the entire file system (that is, specifying "x:\ y:\")
with XCOPY as shown above.  If you absolutely MUST transfer files from one
bootable version of DOS to another, it may be desirable to copy the files of
the root directory one by one--omitting COMMAND.COM--and then use XCOPY one
by one to copy all of any first-level subdirectories.  (Other subdirectories
are copied automatically by this procedure.)  For example:

     XCOPY x:\file1 y:\file1         (for each first-level file)
     ...                             (except COMMAND.COM.      )
     XCOPY x:\dir1 y:\dir1 /S /E     (for each first-level directory)
     ...

If source and destination are to contain different bootable versions, be
careful not to copy other DOS executables (.COM and .EXE files) appropriate
to the source's version of DOS (though, unlike COMMAND.COM, other DOS files
can be copied then deleted afterwards).  Such files will have to be copied
over to the destination diskette from DOS diskettes appropriate to the
destination floppy's version of DOS.


