Welcome to QDC 1.0!
-------------------

QDC stands for Quick Disk Copy - it is intended to save users who
frequently copy disks a lot of time.

When DOS supported only 360K and smaller floppies and there were no
such things as network driver software and TSRs, copying a disk with one
drive was as simple as DISKCOPY A: A: with one swap involved. Even better,
if you had two floppies, you were set! These days, however, machines with
either one 1.44 MB floppy, or one of each of the HD floppies and tons of
network software and TSRs are more the rule. On this type of machine, a
DOS DISKCOPY of a 1.44 MB floppy can take forever! What is especially
annoying is the continual swapping of source and destination disks involved
- on a machine with, say, 450K of conventional memory (the kind CHKDSK
reports) free, a DISKCOPY of a 1.44 MB floppy can take four to five swaps!
DISKCOPYing the same disk shelled out from Lotus may take 8 to 10 swaps!

QDC will alleviate these annoyances - as long as QDC has enough
memory to run (approximately 45K) and sufficient space on the drive it is
started from (as many bytes free as the disk to be copied is large), it will
perform the copy operation in only one swap! You may be thinking this is
just some sort of XCOPY scheme - no! QDC creates an IMAGE FILE of the
source and writes that out to the destination - the source and destination
will DISKCOMPare exactly.


Using QDC
---------

Say you want to copy a 1.44 MB floppy and you have one 3.5" drive you
call A: - then you would insert the source floppy into the drive, type

QDC A:

and follow the directions. Explanation: QDC will take a look at floppy in
drive A: and determine how much space it needs to store the image file. It
then checks this amount against how much it has available in the startup
drive - if the latter amount is larger, QDC begins to read the source floppy
and write an IMAGE FILE of it to the default drive (the one QDC was started
from.) When completed, QDC will prompt you to insert the destination disk
and will write the IMAGE FILE to it. Some caveats:

1) QDC is known to work on 320K, 360K, 720K, 1.2 MB, and 1.44 MB
floppies - it should be able to handle other sizes without a
problem, but this has not been tested. QDC does not trust media
descriptor bytes and determines disk parameters by reading the
first sector's track, sector, etc., information directly.

2) QDC *DOES NOT* format the destination disk like DISKCOPY does.
It is my opinion that there are far better format program
options than DOS FORMAT. My commercial recommendation would
be the Norton Utilities SF program. Sharewarewise, I like
FORDSK. Implementing a fast format in QDC would make the
program twice as large, and implementing a DOS format would not
give one the option of speeding up large copy operations by
using a decent format program - therefore I left formatting
out.


Speeding Up QDC
---------------

As it is, QDC is a fairly fast program, but a few things can be done to
make it even faster:

QDCM.BAT: This batch file is useful for making multiple copies
without having to run QDC repeatedly - this basically
works like DISKCOPY's asking you "Copy another disk (y/n)"
The command syntax for QDCM is the same as that for QDC.

CACHE: Having a hard disk cache will make QDC substantially
faster when it comes to writing the IMAGE FILE back to the
destination disk. There are many good shareware disk
cache programs, I am sure, but I have had the chance only
to look at the commercial ones. PC-KWIK Cache is my
favorite and works well with QDC.

RAM DISK: If you have, say four megabytes of memory, you can set up
a RAM disk and use that as QDC's default drive. The file
CONFIG.RAM is included as an example of how to implement a
RAM DISK using the MS/PC DOS VDISK.SYS driver. Using a
large RAM disk is currently the fastest way to copy disks
using QDC. A later version will include the option of
writing the image file directly to Expanded Memory and
thus eliminate the hassle of the RAM DISK.


QDC 1.0 is NOT Public Domain Software!
--------------------------------------

QDC 1.0 is (c) 1990 by Peter A. Dinda. I wrote QDC to make life simpler
for my coworkers and myself. If you find QDC to be useful, please send $10
or so to:

Peter A. Dinda Re: QDC
404 N. Walbridge #7
Madison, WI 53714

Registering QDC gives you the right to modify the line

#define OWNER "*UNREGISTERED*"

in the source code and recompile. If you send an extra $5 to me, I will do
this for you and send you a binary that will flash your name whenever you
use it. Comments, etc. can also be mailed to the above address or sent via
email to [email protected] and via BBS to the [email protected] BBS
(608) 263-6057.


Why Should You Register QDC?
----------------------------

Registering QDC gives you:

1) Peace of mind knowing you did the right thing helping to support
a poor college student who worked a long time on QDC.
2) The right to recompile the source code with the "OWNER" line
changed to your name.


Who Can't Use QDC
-----------------

Use of QDC by any military establishment is VERBOTEN. Peace, dudes!


Contents of the Distribution Archive
------------------------------------

QDC.EXE - The QDC program
QDC.C - The Turbo C source code to QDC
QDCM.BAT - Multiple copy extension to QDC
GETYN.COM - Needed by QDCM.BAT
CONFIG.RAM - Example CONFIG.SYS file to implement RAM DISK
QDC.DOC - This documentation