Re: How To Duplicate VTS Install Disks

["Ian Piper" <ian@gesn.com>]

In a pinch, try these attached files (zipped).  It is a DOS program called "HD Copy" that duplicates floppy disks track for track.  It doesn't care about what format the disk has or hasn't.  I have been successfully using this program to copy our VTS Install disks for the last two years.

 

Note that if you create a new copy of VTS install disks, that set of disks requires a serial number.  you can obtain a serial number from Barney Lucas at Global McKinney.  The old set of install disks should be sent to Global McKinney for retirement.  Every set of VTS install disks (or GEMS  CD) is a license agreements.  Every copy that a customer has, is a separate license agreement that generates billing for multiple software maintenance fees, even if they are only using one. 

 

If you are on a customer site or dealer site and discover multiple install disk sets or CD's, please send them back to Global McKinney, so we can remove that serial number from existence and maintain one serial number per customer site.

 

Thanks

 

Ian

----- Original Message -----

From: Guy Lancaster

To: Support

Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 3:47 PM

Subject: How To Duplicate VTS Install Disks

  We used to use DOS and Windows DISKCOPY to duplicate VTS disks but it seems that these have become too fussy.  The Windows Copy Disk (right click on the floppy drive in the explorer) can't read a Unix source disk and the DOS box DISKCOPY complains that a pre-formatted target diskette is incompatible.  So we now need to do the copies on a Unix system.

  There is a ddiskcopy utility floating around and you can use that if it's installed (just try running it).  Otherwise, here's how to do the deed using the trusty dd utility.

  (1) First, you need to copy the source disk image to a file.  You can make as many copies as you want from a single image so name and place it according to your needs.  Assuming that you will be finished in one session, I would recommend putting it in /tmp/mydisk1 .   Use disk numbers to keep track of multiple disk images.  The command for this is:

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/tmp/mydisk1

  (2) Second, copy the image to as many blank disks as you need.  For each one the command is:

dd if=/tmp/mydisk1 of=/dev/fd0

  (3) (Optional) Verify the copy.  The VTS install disks are prepared using tar so you can verify the copy using:

tar tvf /dev/fd0

This reads the disk and lists the contents.  You don't need to wait until the bitter end so if it's listing files and not giving errors you can abort this using CTRL-C.

  (4) Clean up.  If you don't need to keep your disk image files around, delete them using:

rm /tmp/mydisk1

  ...and that's it.

  Of course licensing issues are another matter.  :-)

                   Guy