diskcopy
Copies the contents of the floppy disk in the source drive to a formatted or unformatted floppy disk in the destination drive. Used without parameters, diskcopy uses the current drive for the source disk and the destination disk.
Syntax
Parameters
Remarks
- Using disks
Diskcopy works only with removable disks, such as floppy disks. You cannot use diskcopy with a hard disk. If you specify a hard disk drive for Drive1 or Drive2, diskcopy displays the following error message:
Invalid drive specification
Specified drive does not exist or is nonremovable
The diskcopy command prompts you to insert the source and destination disks and waits for you to press any key on the keyboard before continuing.
After copying, diskcopy displays the following message:
Copy another diskette (Y/N)?
If you press Y, diskcopy prompts you to insert source and destination disks for the next copy operation. To stop the diskcopy process, press N.
If you are copying to an unformatted floppy disk in Drive2, diskcopy formats the disk with the same number of sides and sectors per track as are on the disk in Drive1. Diskcopy displays the following message while it formats the disk and copies the files:
Formatting while copying
- Disk serial numbers
If the source disk has a volume serial number, diskcopy creates a new volume serial number for the destination disk and displays the number when the copy operation is complete.
- Omitting drive parameters
If you omit the Drive2 parameter, diskcopy uses the current drive as the destination drive. If you omit both drive parameters, diskcopy uses the current drive for both. If the current drive is the same as Drive1, diskcopy prompts you to swap disks as necessary.
- Using one drive for copying
Run diskcopy from a drive other than the floppy disk drive, for example the C:\ drive. If floppy disk Drive1 and floppy disk Drive2 are the same, diskcopy prompts you to switch disks. If the disks contain more information than available memory can hold, diskcopy cannot read all of the information at once. Diskcopy reads from the source disk, writes to the destination disk, and prompts you to insert the source disk again. This process continues until you have copied the entire disk.
To copy one floppy disk to another using floppy disk drive A:\, switch to the C:\ drive, and then type:
diskcopy a: a:
- Avoiding disk fragmentation
Because diskcopy makes an exact copy of the source disk on the destination disk, any fragmentation on the source disk is transferred to the destination disk. Fragmentation is the presence of small areas of unused disk space between existing files on a disk.
A fragmented source disk can slow down the process of finding, reading, or writing files. To avoid transferring fragmentation from one disk to another, use copy or xcopy to copy your disk. Because copy and xcopy copy files sequentially, the new disk is not fragmented.
Important
- You cannot use xcopy to copy a startup disk.
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Understanding diskcopy exit codes
The following table lists each exit code and a brief description.
Exit code Description 0 Copy operation was successful 1 Nonfatal read/write error occurred 3 Fatal hard error occurred 4 Initialization error occurred To process exit codes returned by diskcomp, you can use the ErrorLevel on the if command line in a batch program. For an example of a batch program that processes exit codes, see diskcomp in Related Topics.
Examples
diskcopy b: a:
Formatting legend
| Format | Meaning |
| Italic | Information that the user must supply |
| Bold | Elements that the user must type exactly as shown |
| Ellipsis (...) | Parameter that can be repeated several times in a command line |
| Between brackets ([]) | Optional items |
| Between braces ({}); choices separated by pipe (|). Example: {even|odd} | Set of choices from which the user must choose only one |
| Courier font | Code or program output |