Windows Tools: Difference between revisions

Except for its obvious purpose, the '''copy''' utility is also useful for concatenating files; this can come in handy when producing disk images, for instance. To illustrate the point, suppose we wanted to produce a file called ''foobar'' from files ''foo'' and ''bar''; we would use the following command:

 

 

The '''/b''' switch indicates that we are dealing with binary files instead of ASCII. We need to specify it as this is behavior is not default when combining files.

DOS users will remember '''diskcopy''', which replicates volumes. It only works with removable media such as memory cards, and floppy disks. The media must be of the same type for the operation to work. E.g., if we had two floppy drives A:, and B:, we could copy A:'s image to B: as such:

 

 

* If the destination drive is not specified, the current one will be used. In addition, the '''/v''' argument can be used for verification (remember, floppy disks are not exactly reliable).

The '''diskpart''' utility is useful for managing partitions and virtual hard drives, which can be used as loopback devices. If you want other types of loopback devices, you might want to consider [[Virtual Floppy Drive|VFD]] for floppy drives, and [[DAEMON Tools]] for optical media.

 

 

This isn't your usualy command-line utiliy: you run it from the command prompt, after which you query commands.

| rowspan="2" | 8dot3name

| query || This can be used in order to find out whether a volume (which may very well be a loopback device) is configured to use the 8.3 file naming scheme. Example:

If no volume is specified, information on all volumes is displayed.

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| set || This option can set one or all volumes to (not) use the 8.3 file name scheme. Before this can be used on a per volume basis, the registry key '''HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreationNtfsDisable8dot3NameCreationNtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation''' must be set to the value 2, if this is not already true. This can be done by using the following command:

Next, we are free to play around with individual volumes:

The last parameter can take the value 0 (enable) or 1 (disable). This is somewhat odd; the reason behind it is probably that Microsoft, in order to avoid confusion, decided to preserve these values, which are also used in a similar command.

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| rowspan="4" | file

| createnew || Creates an empty file (all zeroes) of some size specified, in bytes. Example:

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| setshortname || Sets the 8.3 name for a file (while preserving its long name). Example:

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| setvaliddata || Sets the VDL for a file. Example:

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| setzerodata || Sets one or more bytes in a file to zero. Example:

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[[Category:Tools]]