I have a client that has a gfe on a file - corrupted group 0, and I went to their backup which was created on cd via XCOPY C:\AREV31 E:\AREV31 /S

When the question about file or diretory came up they answered file, not directory. Now I do not know how to recover the arev files, they are all sitting in a file called arev31 in a DATA folder.

Barry

A bit more specific:

………………………………

Does destination specify a file name

or directory name on the target

(F=file, D=directory)?

………………………….

The msoft site says:

]]Press F if you want the file or files to be copied to a file.

Surely there must be a way of copying the "Files" from a "File"

My experience with "XCOPY" is that using the command line you described, and using the "File" option rather than the "Directory" option, you will get the result of origin file overwriting the destination file. I also believe that the "XCOPY" command would have prompted the user as follows for each file copied…

Overwrite blablabla (Yes/No/All)?

I think that the result of the "XCOPY" command would be a copy of the last origin file being copied to the destination file.

But if the destination volume is a CD, then all the files should be there.

Looking closley at the xcopy "Help" it would appear that the "file" option allows you to concatinate all the files into one file. So, now I assume there is no way of unextracting the separate files.

Barry,

About the only thing I can think of is if you can somehow determine the beginning of each separate file. Then, you would need to manually copy & paste the contents into new files.

msorrel@greyhound.com

Greyhound Lines, Inc.

That would be VERY easy if a directory listing for the time of the "backup" were available.

BTW group 0 of .LK files differ from other groups … so find them is easy. I am not sure with group 0 of .OV file .. several .OV files joined together seems to be problem (I didn't check the documentation now). If you are happy that the files are sorted by name you can separate them (.OV groups differ from .LK's)

Rather than using xcopy I have always preffered the zip programs as a backup utility. There is a command line version of Winzip and of course. the original PKZip.exe.

However, if I were using xcopy I would not routinely backup the arev programs directory and I would NOT use the "/S" but rather the "/E" switch which copies subs even if empty and I would be very, very specific ie:

XCOPY C:\AREV31\DATA\*.* E:\AREV31\DATA\*.* /E /Y /V

the "/Y" suppresses the overwrite prompt and "/V" – verifies and slows down the process a bit. To restore just reverse the process –

"XCOPY E:\AREV31\*.* C:\AREV31\*.* /E /Y /V"

For safety, before a restore I would rename C:\AREV31\DATA and create a new, empty C"\AREV31\DATA."

---

Again, there are many reasons to zip rather than xcopy. You can span disks for for example and only changed files are re-zipped. Spanning was incredibly useful in the floppy disk days.

The following is a batch file I created in 1988. I have never lost a single byte of data using it.

——————Begin batch file example——————

@ECHO OFF

CLS

echo ²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²

Echo ²This Function makes an ARCHIVE of the CRT's Data Files and ²

echo ²places this Archive into the VAULTSub-directory of for this ²

echo ²System. ²

echo ² press any key to continue the zip process. ²

echo ²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²

pause

echo Compressing || Zipping – please wait!

cd C:\AREV\TEAM\DATA

pkzip -p -u c:\vault\OINSIGHT\TEAMDAT

echo Done!

pause

@exit

__ end of batch file example

I know this doesn't solve your current problem but something like this will prevent them in the future.

What the /V flag means?

Either A) a file is copied and then a change of file is checked … if not process continues with the next file …

Or

B) All directory is copied and then a change in a file is checked … if not everything is ok.

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The method A) has problems with file to file consistency. (.LK/.OV is the best example). The method B) has problems that there is not guaranted that the process ends in reasonable time (especially in heavy traffic environment).

It is my understanding that the "/V" flag Verifies the copied file is identical to the source.

Also, in my post I said, '. . . be very, very specific . . .

"XCOPY E:\AREV31\*.* C:\AREV31\*.* /E /Y /V"

Note the "\*.*" wild cards following the "\". In the '80s I ran into xcopy weirdness when the wild cards were not included using Verify. Saw the same thing on xcopy restores.

I still strongly recommend using a zip utility rather than xcopy for a backup. On a network, I would consider writing an RBasic routine to File/record copy the data and let AREV deal with open files/records.

And, for heaven's sake – test it to make sure it works.

Sorry Dean,

I didn't read the whole thread and I was in context of another (several days before) opened thread.

For single user environment it's obviously OK.

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