SPACWARN--Hard Disk Free Space Warning Program

PROGRAM STATUS

COPYRIGHTED Dan Moore 1988, Public Domain


DISTRIBUTION / LEGAL DEPARTMENT

SPACWARN.EXE is copyrighted to protect its author. The
program is distributed freely. You may copy it and share
it with others as you wish. You may not charge for this
program other than a small and customary disk duplication
fee. SPACWARN.EXE should not be distributed without its
accompanying documentation file (SPACWARN.DOC).

The author assumes no responsibility whatsoever for fitness
of purpose or damages arising from the use of the SPACWARN
program. As distributed, THIS PROGRAM DOES NOT MODIFY OR
CREATE DATA ON THE COMPUTER SYSTEM ON WHICH IT OPERATES.
SPACWARN may access one or more disk drives in your system,
however it does so in read-only mode. SPACWARN operates in
systems running virus detectors hardware or software
write-protect mechanisms.


WHAT DOES SPACWARN DO?

SPACWARN is a "Low HD Free Space Alarm Program". Although
it may be used manually from the command line as a free
space monitoring tool, it was designed to be included in a
system's AUTOEXEC.BAT file and executed each time the
system is booted (ie, daily). Disk drive addresses and
minimum free space values are passed to SPACWARN. Should
the free space on one or more hard disk drives fall below
the specified minimum, the program will stop, beep
profusely, and display total space, threshold values, and
free space for all offending drives. You will be required
to press a key to terminate the program. If included
within an AUTOEXEC.BAT file, SPACWARN will effectively
suspend the system initialization process until the warning
message(s) is (are) acknowledged by the user (a single
keystroke will terminate the program and return control to
DOS).

If all specified drives are within acceptable free space
limits, SPACWARN will display a single line stating that
all is well and will terminate of its own accord. In this
case, the AUTOEXEC process would continue undisturbed.


HOW TO USE SPACWARN

For convenience's sake, SPACWARN's input can come from a
standard ASCII file (which must be called SPACWARN.DAT), or
from command-line parameters. Up to 24 drive/free space
parameters may be specified (you may have up to 24 logical
drives on your system, not counting A and B which are
diskettes by default). Each parameter consists of a drive
letter (C-Z) followed by a 1- to 3-digit free space value
expressed in megabytes. SPACWARN will monitor each drive
for the corresponding free space value. Thus, the
parameter required to issue a warning when drive C's free
space falls below 10 megabytes is:

C10

Similarly, D25 will cause a warning to be issued when the
free space on drive D falls below 25 megabytes.

To use file input, use EDLIN or COPY CON: or your favorite
ASCII editor and create an ASCII file called SPACWARN.DAT,
containing one parameter per line. SPACWARN assumes that
the file is in the default directory. A SPACWARN.DAT file

to monitor drives C, D, and E for 10, 2, and 5 meg of free
space, respectively, would look like:

c10
d2
E5

To do the same thing using command line parameters (which
take precedence over the SPACWARN.DAT file), start SPACWARN
from the command line as follows:

C>SPACWARN /C10/d2/e5

NOTE: as you have already noticed, drive letters are not
case-sensitive, and parameters do not have to be entered in
alphabetical drive letter sequence.


ERROR MESSAGES

Because of its inherent simplicity and the fact that it was
coded in a couple evenings, SPACWARN lacks sophistication
in the error detection and correction department. It does
not verify whether or not the drives exist (it assumes that
YOU know that), and it is totally unforgiving if you make a
mistake while typing the parameters. The only error
detected by the program is the absence of a SPACWARN.DAT
file if no command parameters were used. If that condition
is detected, it will definitely let you know about it.
SPACWARN is unquestioning; you may set a free space
threshold of 30 megabytes on a 20-megabyte drive. Doing so
may not be such a bad idea if all you want to do is monitor
disk space utilization. You may also specify drives A and
B, but SPACWARN will insist on having diskettes in these
drives (lest you receive the dreaded Abort, retry, ignore
message from DOS). A future release of SPACWARN may have
more comprehensive error detection and detection; this one
does not.


SUPPORT

If SPACWARN breaks on my machine, I will fix it and
re-distribute it. If you experience problems or have
suggestions and know where to find me, I will listen, but
I can make no promises of support for programs which work
satisfactorily on my equipment.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Marty Shannon for testing the program in its raw,
unsophisticated state and making suggestions for a new
name, better display cosmetics, and consistency in the
naming of the SPACWARN.DAT file. All his suggestions were
implemented in the program's final version.



TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT

SPACWARN written in Microsoft QuickBasic release 3.0 and
has about 90 lines of code. Disk space statistics,
windowing and screen displays are performed via Hamerly
Computer Services' ProBas routines, an excellent QB
productivity tool (ProBas is the Commercial release of the
popular ADVBAS Shareware product). The program was written
on an AT clone with AWARD BIOS, running IBM PC-DOS 3.3.
The system is equipped with two 40meg drives formatted,
partitioned, and accessed via SpeedStor (another winner)
and the system runs under PC-DOS release 3.3. SPACWARN was
also tested on a number of other PC and AT systems running
under releases PC/MS-DOS releases 2.0 thru 3.3.

I hope you find this program useful.

Dan Moore
4/27/1988