Kreisen 3 8 6 X / X E Backing Up Your Hard Disk, The BACKUP Command, Using, For information on formatting diskettes, see Chapter 5, “Using Floppy Disks.”

For more information on directory and subdirectory organization with MS-DOS, see your MS-DOS User’s Guide.

Backing Up Your Hard Disk

It is highly recommended that you make back up copies of your valuable hard disk files regularly. Because hard disk drives are fragile, they can sometimes be damaged. It is also possible to erase some or all hard disk files through the use of incorrect FORMAT and COPY commands. Backing up your files is the only way you can be sure that you don’t lose information you may have spent months or even years gathering.

Two external command programs on your MS-DOS install diskette will help you back up your hard disk. The first, BACKUP, will copy files from the hard disk onto diskettes. The other, RESTORE, allows you to use the diskettes created by the BACKUP program to reload the files back onto the hard disk, if necessary. The following sections describe how to use these two command programs.

The BACKUP Command

This command backs up one or more files from your hard disk onto floppy diskettes. The diskettes must be formatted by the MS-DOS FORMAT command. Do not use the /S switch when formatting these diskettes. Disk space taken up by the inclusion of the active MS-DOS routines would be wasted with the BACKUP command.

Note

For information on formatting diskettes, see Chapter 5, “Using Floppy Disks.”

6-16 Using Your Hard Disk