Copy archived files across two disks

Helpline Q&A Directory

My files are getting too big to fit on one floppy disk. How can I copy a large file on to multiple floppies?

No matter how hard we try we can't completely dispense with floppies - even though their 1.44MB capacity is often too small for a single file. The best solution is a ZIP archive program, such as WinZip Computing's $29 WinZip 8.1 shareware, which can be downloaded from www.winzip.com. Virtually all ZIP programs let you span an archive across multiple disks. Besides, copying an archive (instead of an uncompressed file) will reduce the number of disks you need.

If you have WinZip, right-click the file you want to copy and select Add to Zip. In the 'Add to archive' field in WinZip's Add dialog box, preface the filename with 'a:', as in a:bigfile (assuming that you need to span your floppy drive).

As soon as you type a: into that field, WinZip's 'Multiple disk spanning' option will become available. You can leave it on the default Automatic setting. Click ok to start the compression and spanning; the program will prompt you to insert other blank formatted disks as needed.

If you don't want to compress your files, download a file splitter shareware program from www.softdd.com/filesplt/ or http://webpages.cwia.com/~haustein/filesplitter.html. These programs split large files into multiple smaller files of a specified maximum size (the default is 1.44MB). They also create a batch file for restoring the original, now-divided file to its united state.