CASE HISTORY # RESTORE - Conclusion
       by The Disk Doctor



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Copyright (C) 1988,  the Disk Doctor.

First published in the Rochester (PC)^3 News:
   Picture City PC Programming Club
   PO BOX 20342
   Rochester, NY 14602
The Disk Doctor may be contacted at this
address, or via CIS [73147,414].

This material may be reproduced for internal
use by other not-for-profit groups, provided
this copyright notice is included.
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9:30am
I had just asked S. whether she had
formatted her hard disk yesterday.
 
"No.  Of course not.  That would erase
everything, wouldn't it?"
 
"Oh, okay."  I was a little surprised.
"It's just that I noticed that this
\WORDSTAR directory was created only
yesterday, so I assumed that..."
 
"She looked at my screen.  How can you
tell that?  The dates on these files are
all 2 or 3 years old."
 
"I don't look at the file dates, I look at
the dot and double-dot..."
 
"Geez, don't start talking to me in Morse
Code."
 
"I'm sorry.  Here look,"  I pointed at the
screen.  "The first two entries of a sub-
directory, dot and double-dot, contain
information about the directory tree.
Looking at the date on these first 2
entries, tells me when this directory was
created.  I was trying to determine
whether you had reformatted recently, but
of course, that overlooks a more obvious
explanation."
 
"Which is?"
 
"When you stopped using the Wordstar
program last year, you deleted it off your
hard disk."  I quickly called up DEBUG to
look at the first sector of one of the
Wordstar files.  "Yesterday you needed to
restore a file, so you re-created a
\WORDSTAR directory."
 
"Well that's exactly what happened, but I
don't see how that has any bearing on this
problem?"
 
"Oh, but it does, S.  The BACKUP file
stores a file header containing the path
name of the directory where the file came
from.  RESTORE will only restore a file to
a directory with the same name.  By
looking at the file header with DEBUG, I
can see that the last time you used
WordStar, the directory was named \WS.
Now watch this."
 
I typed  'RESTORE A: C:\*.WS /S'.  The
disk drive came to life, and one by one
the list of filenames filled the screen:
 
         \WS\NCR1.WS...
         \WS\ADAMS.WS...
         \WS\TFGBI.WS...
 
S. looked puzzled.  "But where are all the
files going?  I don't have any directory
called '\WS'. "
 
"One nice feature of the RESTORE command:
it creates the directory if necessary.
There, we're done.  Now I can copy the
document files into the \WORDSTAR
directory where you have the program
loaded, and you'll be all set."
 
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[P.S.  The BACKUP command in DOS 3.3 uses
a completely different and incompatible
format from earlier versions of DOS.]
 
 
NOTE:  This is a dramatization of an
actual case history.  I purposely
exaggerated the problems S. experienced,
to better illustrate the idiosyncrasies of
the RESTORE command.