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Stowaway True Archival System for PC Systems Offered by: Patri-Soft Reference Guide by Norm Patriquin Patri-Soft 5225 Canyon Crest Drive Suite 71-358 Riverside, CA 92507 Patriquin's BBS (DATA) 714-352-2825 (VOICE) 714-352-2820 (FAX) 714-352-1527 Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft all rights reserved Stowaway User's Guide Table of Contents WARRANTY INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Important Information About This Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 About Stowaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Stowaway Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Archiving with Stowaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 System Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Installation from the distribution diskette . . . . . . . . . 6 Setting system options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Test to verify installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Quick Start guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Starting Stowaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Archiving files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Starting from the menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Selecting files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Changing directories to select from . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Viewing files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Associating a group name with files . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Archive processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Archive termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Restoring files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Restoring files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Initial restore file selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Selecting a group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Restore now or list specific files . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Selecting files from the selection list . . . . . . . . . . 17 Restore processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Restore termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Archival Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Archival vs Compression Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 How Stowaway works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Archive Volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Archive Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Archive File Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Archive File Expiration Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 page i Stowaway User's Guide Table of Contents Other Archive Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Stowaway reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Preparing archive volume sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Stowaway's Main Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Manual Archive Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Entering archive file descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Request window for file description . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Archive File Selection Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Selecting Groups of Files for Archival . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Archive File Selection Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Archiving a full directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Completing file selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Automatic Archive Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Path to archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Pattern to archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Process all subdirectories (Y/N): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Files Older than . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Archive until this amount of freespace met . . . . . . . . . . 32 Select only files needing backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Reset ARCHIVE attribute after archival . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Specifying Archive Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Archive groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Adding an archive group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Archive Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Current File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Disk Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Request for archive volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Recovering from disk write errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Completing archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Entering Restore Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Selecting Group to Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Listing Files to Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Restore File Select List Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Starting Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Restore Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 page ii Stowaway User's Guide Table of Contents Overlaying Files with duplicate Names . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Completing Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Utility Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Remove files after archival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Delete files from archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Verify archived files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Pack the archive index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Build index from archive volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Clean archive indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Set alternate display colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Command Line operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 command line format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Command parameter explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Specifying options through DOS environment variables . . . . . . 57 Archive Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Multiple Archive sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Backing up the indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Making copies of archive data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Context Sensitive Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Operating system compatibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Archive device compatibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 I/O errors on disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Technical Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 page iii Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft IMPORTANT WARRANTY INFORMATION TRIAL USE (SHAREWARE EVALUATION VERSION) WARRANTY: The Shareware evaluation (trial use) version is provided AS IS. Patri- Soft MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. REGISTERED VERSION ONLY WARRANTY: Patri-Soft warrants the physical diskette(s) and physical documentation provided with registered versions to be free of defects in materials and workmanship for a period of ninety days from the date of registration. If Patri-Soft receives notification within the warranty period of defects in materials or workmanship, and such notification is determined by Patri-Soft to be correct, Patri-Soft will replace the defective diskette(s) or documentation. The entire and exclusive liability and remedy for breach of this Limited Warranty shall be limited to replacement of defective diskette(s) or documentation and shall not include or extend to any claim for or right to recover any other damages, including but not limited to, loss of profit, data, or use of the software, or special, incidental, or consequential damages or other similar claims, even if Patri-Soft has been specifically advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event will Patri-Soft's liability for any damages to you or any other person ever exceed the lower of suggested list price or actual price paid for the license to use the software, regardless of any form of the claim. Patri-Soft SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. page 1 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft --------------------------------------- Important Information About This Manual --------------------------------------- ========================================== This manual for Stowaway is distributed as machine readable text with the Shareware version of Stowaway. It is different from the bound, printed manual for the registered version of Stowaway. The bound version is in a 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 format, spiral bound, and is professionally formatted with figures to describe Stowaway's features. This manual is designed to print on any printer. It describes all features in Stowaway and basically has the same text as the bound manual. You will receive the bound manual when you register Stowaway. ========================================== page 2 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft About Stowaway Stowaway is a personal archival system for your computer. Stowaway releases space on your hard disk by archiving inactive files to offline storage media such as diskette. The files and software on our PC systems are changing at a rapid pace. We are constantly creating new data, trying new software, and updating old systems. Our hard disks become vessels holding massive amounts of information we want to keep at our fingertips. In our fast paced world, much of what we use today is old tomorrow! Old data and software clutter our hard disks files and do little more than take up space. These files get in our way when we search for the files we need. Deleting old files is not a solution, as we may have use for them in the future, so we end up purchasing more hard disk space to increase our storage capacity. Although we do have need for larger hard disks to accommodate today's larger software and more complex systems, we can also use what space we have more efficiently. Hard disks are expensive storage locations for inactive data. Based on disk storage prices in 1991, it costs about $5.00 to store 1,000,000 characters of data on a hard disk. You can store the same amount of data in archive format on diskette for less than $0.50. This example shows a substantial savings to be gained archiving data. Inactive data should be stored on inexpensive media and in a place where we no longer have to deal with it each day. Stowaway is a solution to the storage and maintenance of your inactive files. It manages the process of storing and tracking inactive data on less expensive storage media such as diskettes. Stowaway automates the task of moving files to offline storage and cataloging them so they may be quickly located and restored when you need them. Stowaway is a data and software archival system for your personal computer. page 3 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Stowaway Features ∙ Age and select files for archival automatically based on your specification criteria. ∙ Select files to be archived from optional scrollable selection lists. ∙ Locate archived files quickly using hard disk archive indexes maintained by Stowaway. ∙ Formats new diskettes automatically. ∙ Compressed data over 50%. ∙ Recover files to their original or new location. ∙ Archive to diskette, removable hard disks, or optical disks. ∙ Transport archives to other systems. ∙ Create multiple archive sets to keep archives for different users on the same system. ∙ Categorize archive files into groups. ∙ Add descriptive text to archive files. ∙ Archive and restore directories or trees. ∙ View WordPerfect and text files. ∙ Assign expiration dates to archived files ∙ Run with command line parameters or menus. ∙ Examine context sensitive help at any time. ∙ Copy archive volumes easily to offsite storage. ∙ Archive files in a network environment. page 4 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Archiving with Stowaway Stowaway moves files to offline disk volumes and keeps indexes of them on your hard drive. You retain same access to inactive files that you had when they were on your hard disk. The index is instantly accessible to let you locate files. When you need a file again, Stowaway will bring it back from storage for you. Stowaway organizes your archives volumes in simple numerical order so it is easy to file and locate archive volumes. All archive volumes are numbered sequentially starting at 1. Newly archived files are stored in the next available space on archive volumes. Volumes are completely used before new volumes are started. Stowaway tracks volumes by number and records information about the exact location of every stored file in its hard disk index. Archive volumes are stored in numeric order. During restore processing, Stowaway determines where the archived file is stored, and requests archive volumes by number. This organization lets you to keep hundreds of volumes of archive data will still maintaining easy access to any file. Use Stowaway to save all your old and seldom used files. Archive: 1. Old versions of software 2. Old documentation 3. Old data files 4. Old system configuration information 5. Picture and graphic files page 5 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft System Setup Installation from the distribution diskette To install Stowaway take the following steps... 1. Place distribution diskette in any diskette drive. 2. Enter the following INSTALL command. (If you are not using drive A, substitute the appropriate drive letter as the first letter in the command.) A:INSTALL Once the installation is complete, you will find the following files installed in the selected directory on your hard disk: STOW.EXE The Stowaway program file. STOW.HLP Contains the context sensitive help. The first time Stowaway is started it builds files it needs for its general operation. They are: STOSAWAY.DAT The options file. These options are set using the Setup option from the Stowaway menu. STOVOLIX.DAT Stowaway's index containing information about each archive volume it maintains. STOGRPIX.DAT Stowaway's index containing information about each archive group defined. STOFILIX.DAT Stowaway's index containing information about each file maintained in the archives. Note: Each of the installed file names begin with the letters "STO". Stowaway allows multiple archive sets to be created. Each set is assigned a three letter identification. Stowaway's index and option file names will be prefixed with the three letter identifier on secondary archive sets so archive set data is maintained independently. Alternate archive sets will be discussed further in subsequent sections of this manual. page 6 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Setting system options Stowaway is installed with default system options. Verify these options before using Stowaway. Enter the STOW command from the DOS command line: C> STOW<Enter> From Stowaway's Main Menu, select the SetUp function by pressing 'S' or by using the menu selection bar. Stowaway's options will be displayed. Examine and modify the options as they are appropriate for you. The following descriptions will help you decide what options to choose. Help is always available by pressing <F1> at any time. Drive to archive to/from? Enter the letter of the DOS device you will use to write archive data. This may be the drive letter of any valid DOS mountable disk device. You may use 5 1/4 or 3 1/2 diskette formats or large capacity demountable hard disk type devices. Level of compression desired? Use the Right and Left cursor positioning keys to select the level of compression desired for data written to the archives. NONE Do not compress archive data. Will provide the fastest possible archiving but you will use many archive disks. MINIMUM Provides about 40% compression of data but is not as slow as higher compression levels. STANDARD Provides about 45% compression on data but is not as slow as MAXIMUM compression. MAXIMUM Provides 50-60% compression but is slower than other compression. This is the recommended level of compression to use. page 7 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Disk capacity? Specify the size of disk you will be using for archival. Each archival disk should be the same size. This size is used when Stowaway formats new diskettes for the archives. If you incorrectly specify a size of a high density disk and place a low density disk in the drive, Stowaway will format the disk as a high density disk and format errors will be encountered. Enter descriptions when archiving (Y/N/Ask) Since filenames are often not descriptive enough to help locate a file, you can optionally enter descriptive text for each file archived. Descriptions are entered when files are selected for archival. Enter 'Y' if Stowaway is to prompt for descriptive text for each file to be archived. When 'N' is specified Stowaway will not prompt for descriptions. Enter 'A' to make Stowaway <A>sk if descriptions are to be entered before archive selection is started. A value of <Yes> assumes descriptions are to be asked for. Even with a value of <Yes>, you may temporarily suspend entering descriptions for each file by pressing <Escape> when the description is requested. You will not be asked for descriptions for subsequent files. Perform a group archive? (Y/N/Ask) After selecting files for archival, you may assign a group name to the set of files. This group name lets you categorize files stored in the archives. During restore, you can list or select files by group name, as well as filename or directory name. Groups and their descriptions are saved by Stowaway in its indexes. New groups may be added at any time. When prompted for a group name, you are presented with a scrollable page 8 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft selection list of existing groups. You may select one of the previously defined groups, or a new group to store the files under. Typical groups might be SPREADSHEET, GRAPHICS, SMITHS, LETTERS, MEMOS, HOME, CORPORATE, etc. Enter 'Y' to be prompted to enter group information for sets of files to be archived. Specify 'A' to have Stowaway <A>sk if you want to enter group names before each archive process. Enter 'N' to indicate group names are not to be associated with archived files. Enter an expiration date for files archived? (Y/N) Expiration dates may be optionally specified for each set of files archived. When 'N' is specified to bypass the prompt for expiration dates during archive file selection, you may still specify expiration dates by pressing <F8> while selecting files for archival. Enter 'Y' if you want Stowaway to prompt for an expiration date during archive file selection. Verify archive data after it is written? (Y/N) For data integrity, Stowaway can verify archive volume contents before deleting archived files from your hard disk. The verify process is performed just before you are asked to remove an archive volume from the drive. Verification rereads the entire disk to make sure the data is accessible. Use DOS Verify feature? (Y/N) DOS provides a Verify feature to check that data is properly written during disk write processing. This feature adds additional time to verify disk data during processing, but provides an additional level of assurance that archive data is properly written to disk and can later be accessed. This verification may also be activated through the DOS VERIFY command, Documentation about it may be found in DOS reference page 9 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft manuals. Enter 'Y' to have Stowaway activate the DOS VERIFY feature during its operation. We recommend you use this feature. Sound speaker tones when action needed? (Y/N) If you dislike the speaker sounds Stowaway makes during processing, specify <N> to have Stowaway disable all sounds during its operation. When <Y> is specified, you will hear a quiet tic as each file is archived. This gives you audible signal that archive is currently working. You will also be beeped whenever Stowaway is waiting for you to take an action, such as placing another volume in the drive. Delete files after archival? (Y/N) Normally archival is the process of copying files to another storage location and then deleting them from your hard disk. If you want to retain the files on your hard disk after archiving them, specify <No>. Specify <Ask> to indicate you desire to be prompted before Stowaway deletes the files after archival. At the prompt you may decide if the files are to be deleted or not. When experimenting with Stowaway, set this value to <N>. You may then practice archival without actually removing files from your system. Stowaway comes with this option set to <N>. When you are ready to start archiving, set this value to <Y> or <A>. A potential reason for archiving without deleting is to use Stowaway to copy selected files to diskette to take to another location. You still want to keep the files on your current drive. Another use of archival without deletion is to take a copy of files to place in the archives for historical reasons. You may store multiple files in the archives with the same name. This lets you keep copies the same file at different points in its life. page 10 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Overlay files when restoring? (Y/N/Ask) If during restore, Stowaway finds a file already defined on the hard disk with the same name as the file being restored, it must decide if the existing file is to be replaced, or to bypass restoring the file. The following options to indicate what action Stowaway is to take when files of duplicate names are found during restore processing. Yes Replace the existing file with the new file. No Don't overlay the existing file. Skip the restore for the file and continue restoring other files. Ask Prompt when duplicate files are encountered and ask if the file is to be replaced, or the restore bypassed. Update Replace files that are newer than the ones present on the disk. The DOS date of the file on the hard disk will be compared to the DOS date of the archive file recorded when the file was originally archived. Test to verify installation After Stowaway is successfully installed you will want to take a few minutes to learn how it works and develop come confidence in it. You may test Stowaway without actually archiving any data from your hard disk by setting the "Delete files after archival" Setup option to <N>. Explore Stowaway's features by archiving and restoring files and directories. When restoring files, always specify an alternate restore target pathname so you will not replace the files on your hard disk during your evaluation. Since Stowaway allows multiple archive sets to be created, you can create a special archive set to test or demonstrate Stowaway. If you would like to use this feature specify /ID:TMP page 11 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft on the Stowaway command line or set a DOS environment variable with the archive set id desired. SET STOW=/ID:TMP You may delete the test archive set by using the Clean option from Stowaway's utility menu. Archive volumes used for the test archive set may be reused for any other archive set. You do not need to delete the files on the disk before reusing them as Stowaway will do this for you. page 12 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Quick Start guide If you dislike reading manuals and want to get right to the action, this section will get you started using Stowaway. Remember the <F1> key provides direct access to information about your current action in Stowaway. The context sensitive help system provides complete information for using the system. Starting Stowaway Use the STOW command to start Stowaway. Stowaway may be started from any directory or disk. Stowaway uses indexes and options from the directory \STOWAWAY. You may place the STOWAWAY directory in your PATH environment variable (see your DOS manual) or may specify the pathname where the STOW command exists as the command prefix. Following are some command examples: STOW \STOW\STOW D:\STOW\STOW Stowaway can be run from the DOS command line using command line parameters. Command line parameters are documented later in this manual. This section assumes you are using menus to direct Stowaway's operation. We assume you have already used the Setup of the Main Menu to specify system options. If you have not done this yet, do it now. Archiving files 1. Starting from the menu... Select the Archive function from Stowaway's main menu. You will be presented with a second menu to select how files to be archived are to be selected. Files can be automatically selected based on entered specifications, or manually select files from scrollable directory lists. Choose the manual selection option for your evaluation. This will give you a good idea of how Stowaway works. page 13 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Depending on Setup options specified, you may be asked the following question... Do you want to enter descriptions for files to be archived? (Y/N) Answer 'Y' if you want to manually enter a description for one or more files to be archived. 2. Selecting files... Next you will be presented with a display of files from the current directory. This is a selection list to let you to mark files for archival. Press the <Space Bar> to toggle your selection on or off. Depending on your options, Stowaway may ask you to enter a description for any files you mark to be archived. To ignore the description for a single file, press <Enter> without entering any data. To ignore entering descriptions for this and all subsequent files, press the <Escape> key. File descriptions will assist you in locating files at restore time. You will be able to browse through description data as well as file names, and directory names. 3. Changing directories to select from... At the top of the scrollable list of files are subdirectories defined within the directory. These serve two purposes. First they can be selected like files to mark an entire directory or directory tree for archiving. Second, you can position the selection bar on a directory name and press <Enter> to change the list displayed to a new directory. Stowaway remembers all selected files even though you may change directories. The upper right hand portion of the display shows the total number of files and amount of disk space to be freed as a result of archival. page 14 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft 4. Viewing files... Press <F1> for help with all the functions of the selection screen. You can View WordPerfect or text files by positioning the selection bar on them and pressing <V>. When you have marked some files for archival and are ready to move to the next step press <F10>. 5. Associating a group name with files... Depending on setup options specified, you may be asked if you want to assign a group name to the files to be archived. If you respond 'Y' Stowaway will present you with a group selection display. Archive groups are a feature provided to help you categorize your archive data more effectively. Locating files by name may not seem difficult at archival time, but after a few months you will appreciate any additional comments you may have attached to file names. Enter any group name to be associated with the set of files to be archived, and enter a description to help explain the purpose of the group. 6. Archive processing... Stowaway will present an archive status display. You will immediately be asked to place an archive volume in the output drive. Place any formatted or unformatted disk in the drive. IF THE DISK CONTAINS DATA IT WILL BE ERASED! Press <Enter> to indicate the volume is ready. Archive processing will progress while continually updating the status on the display. You will be asked for additional disk volumes as they are needed. Label each archive volume with the number indicated by Stowaway. It is usually sufficient to place a label with a large number on it. page 15 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft 7. Archive termination... When archive processing ends, Stowaway saves its own indexes and options at the end of the archived data on the archive volume. This may be used if you need to recover the indexes on another machine. Restoring files 1. Restoring files... Restore processing is very similar to archive processing except you select files to be restored from Stowaway's index of archived files. From the Stowaway Main Menu, select restore to begin processing. 2. Initial restore file selection... There are three levels of file selection in restore. Each successive level further qualifies files to be restored. At the first level, you indicate any pathname or filename wildcard entries to be used to select files to be restored. On the same display you can specify beginning and ending dates for files qualify for restore. Press <F10> after entering the information. You are not required enter any data at this point. Press <F10> to proceed to the next selection display. page 16 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft 3. Selecting a group... If you have associated group names with files you archived, you will be presented with a selection display of all defined groups and asked if you want to restore files from any particular group. The first entry in this list is a generic entry indicating to select files from all groups. Other entries are for specific groups. Selecting a specific group at this point will isolate the files to be restored to files associated with that group. Pressing <Enter> from this display will move you to the next step in restore selection. 4. Restore now or list specific files... Stowaway now asks if you want to restore all found in the archive indexes matching level 1 and level 2 selection criteria, or if you want to review a list of these files and select specific ones to restore. If you have already entered enough information to have the proper files restored, you are ready to begin. Start restore by pressing <R>. 5. Selecting files from the selection list... Selecting <L> for List will cause Stowaway to locate all files that qualify your selection criteria. Files will be displayed in a scrollable selection list. You may mark any number of files to be restored. Use the <Space Bar> to toggle selection on or off. Use the <F1> key to see other features of the restore selection display. You may sort the list, zoom it larger to fill the display and display alternate information about the archived data. When finished with the selection list, press <F10> to begin restoring the selected files. page 17 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft 6. Restore processing... The restore status display will be shown and you will immediately be asked to place a specific archive disk in the drive. Press <Enter> to indicate the disk is ready. Restore will begin and its status will be reported until all files are processed. 7. Restore termination... When restore completes Stowaway will display a message indicating it is done. Remove the archive volume from the drive and file it in your archive set. That is all there is to basic Stowaway processing. There are several features we have not mentioned in this quick start section. Use the help system or browse this manual to learn more about the system. page 18 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Archival Concepts Hard disks are not intended to be repositories for a lifetime of information. When we get a larger hard disk it enables us to store more files, but does not solve our problem of managing inactive files. We often keep old and obsolete files on our hard disks just in case we might someday need them. It becomes convenient to save old copies of data just in case we might need them. Unfortunately, we gradually consume the space on the disk and begin looking ways to release disk space. We can immediately delete some files. Others we may compress to keep around while reducing the disk space they require. When all else fails, we look for files to copy to diskette for safe keeping. This scenario demonstrates some of the basic parts of computer disk storage management. They are: 1. Remove unneeded data by deleting it. 2. Compress data on primary storage when practical. 3. Move old or archive copies of data to less expensive storage. 4. Purchase new primary storage only when necessary. You might think that hard disks are not expensive, why not just keep buying bigger ones? Purchasing additional disk space might work for a while but there are other costs to keeping data than just hard disk space. Every file on your hard disk must be managed. It must be kept track of, as well as regularly backed up. The more files we keep on our hard disk, the more work we have to do to manage them. Archival is a procedure for moving data to a special offline location where the cost of management and storage is much less than on our hard disk. Archived data is stored away so we do not have to work with on a day-to-day basis. Archived files no longer require repeated backup, and they are filed properly once, so they may be easily found when needed. One common use of archiving is to save old generations of data. For instance, you might want to keep a copy of a customer database on a monthly basis. This lets you go back and restore the database from any monthly copy. Backup systems don't provide this capability as they only keep one or two old copies of data. page 19 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft The concept of archival is not new to us, we use archival techniques in our everyday lives. For example, the federal government requires us to keep years of tax receipts for proof in case we are eventually audited. We may keep our current years tax receipts and data in our desk, but we typically don't have enough desk space to hold several years of information. It is instead "archived" to the closet or garage for storage. The garage holds more information than the desk, and is a less costly storage area. It is the same concept for hard disk management. Many computer users have implemented simple archival systems of their own. They usually consist of using the DOS COPY command to copy old files to diskette. Then they store the disks in a safe location. This technique is valid but is often incomplete because we do not take the time and effort to properly catalog and organize the disks as we create them. We quickly discover this when we go looking for a file we once saved to diskette and cannot locate it. Stowaway's archival system provides the proven methodology and software to create and manage our archives for us. It is implemented to make archiving data almost effortless. You don't need to worry about how to label or store archive diskettes. When a file is needed, Stowaway helps locate it quickly. Stowaway puts your computer to work for you to manage your archive data. Archival vs Compression Systems Since modems were introduced and PC users began transmitting files to other systems, file compression utilities were developed to reduce the number of characters transmitted over phone lines between two computers. They also served to group files together for transmission. These same compression utilities were quickly found useful for compressing and storing data in a format that used less disk space. Over the years different compression utilities have proliferated. They have greatly improved in their compression ability and performance, but still provide the same basic function of compression and grouping data. Some of these utilities become known as archival systems even though they only archive data in a crude sense. They do not automate the storage and cataloging of data for a user. They rely page 20 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft on the user to "archive" the compressed files to offline storage using the DOS COPY command. Compression systems provide valuable capabilities to the PC user and allow for much more efficient use of hard disk space, but their archival capabilities are limited and should not substitute for a good archival system. How Stowaway works Archive Volumes Different disk device types may be used to contain archival data. These devices may include 3 1/2 diskettes, 5 1/4 diskettes, removable hard disk devices, optical disk devices, and more. Due to this variety of archival storage devices, any archive storage media is referred to by Stowaway as an archive volume. Stowaway archival processing takes the files you select and writes them on archive volumes. Each file is written to volume in a compressed format. Each Stowaway archive volume contains two files. The first file is an archive volume label file identifying the archive volume as well as information about other volumes written before and after the volume. The second file on an archive volume contains all archive data written to the volume. This file contains any number of compressed archived files and corresponding information needed to restore them. Since all files are written to a single output file, archive disk space is saved and archive performance is improved. To use volumes efficiently, each volume is completely filled before a new volume is started. Whenever a new archive process is started, Stowaway asks for the last archive volume used for the previous archive. It then appends new data being archived to the same volume. Archive Sets A set of archive volumes is a series of numbered diskettes or disk volumes containing archive data. Stowaway uses only one set of archive data for any archive process. To use an alternative archive set you start Stowaway with 3 character set identifier. page 21 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Use the /ID:xxx parameter on the stowaway command line. Separate hard disk archive indexes are created for each archive volume set. Basically, archive sets let you keep track of multiple archives with Stowaway. A common reason for keeping multiple archive sets is to keep separate archives for different people using the same machine. For example, different users on a network. Archive File Index As files are archived, an entry for each file is placed in an archive index maintained in the Stowaway directory on your hard disk. This index is always maintained on the hard disk and may grow to be fairly large. About 80 characters of hard disk space is used for each file archived. The archive index record contains all information necessary for locating and restoring files. The archive index makes it possible for Stowaway to list archive files at your request without having to read archive volumes. When you restore a file, Stowaway uses its index to locate files. When the exact files to be restored are selected, information in the index identifies the exact volumes needed to restore the file. Stowaway starts restore processing and asks you to place specific volumes in the drive as they are needed. As you archive more and more data, the archives continue to grow. Archive volumes are inexpensive as compared to hard disk space; so, adding new volumes to the archives is not costly. To preserve hard disk space used by the archive indexes, you may delete index entries from the archive index. Future versions of Stowaway will let you to reuse archive volumes as the data on them is released. Archive File Expiration Dates You may optionally assign expiration dates to sets of files archived. An expiration date is a date in the future when the archived files can automatically be deleted from the archives. Expiration dates are part of automated archival management. When you specify expiration dates for archive files, you are giving Stowaway information that lets it automatically manage archive files and are freeing yourself from the burden of having to again examine the file at some later time to determine if it is still page 22 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft needed. When the day of the expiration date arrives, Stowaway can automatically remove files from the archives. To remove expired archive files, use the Pack Archive Index utility. This is accessed through the Utility option from the main menu. If you do not pack your archives using this utility, expired index entries will remain in the archives. Not all files will have expiration dates. Files with no expiration dates will be kept indefinitely. It is a good idea to assign expiration dates whenever possible as they help to keep the archives uncluttered. Other Archive Indexes In addition to the archive file index, Stowaway also maintains indexes about each archive volume and archive group defined. The archive volume index contains information about each volume and its status in the archives. The group index keeps all group names defined to Stowaway and their associated descriptions. These indexes are maintained as separate files in the Stowaway directory. Separate indexes are maintained for each archive set. page 23 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Stowaway reference Preparing archive volume sets Before using Stowaway you will need to prepare a set of archive volumes. When using diskettes as archive volumes, start with a fresh box of the highest quality diskettes you can find. Of course, Stowaway can't tell the quality of your disks, but if your archives are important to you, it is worth a few more cents per disk to avoid the problems and wasted time poor disks can cost you. Take the labels provided with the disks and using a large felt marker, number the disks sequentially 1 through 10 (or whatever). If you plan on keeping multiple archive disk sets, you should mark all the disks in a set with a set identifier. Stowaway can keep separate indexes for different sets of archive volumes. Stowaway only works with one archive set at a time. A good use for different archive sets is to let multiple users keep separate archive sets on a single computer. Each user can then have their own set of archive disks. For most users only one set of archive volumes are used. page 24 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Stowaway's Main Menus Following are examples of Stowaway's main menu structure. The (...) indicate where a menu selection takes you to another sub- menu. All other selections immediately take the action specified. The capitalized character on each menu line indicates the menu selection character that can be pressed to immediately select a menu item. You may also use a mouse with a single click to select a menu option, or use the cursor up and down keys to position a menu selection bar and then press <Enter> to select any menu item. Main Menu Archive files to diskette Restore files from diskette Set up Utilities Help Print order form Exit Archive Select files manually Scan files automatically Quit to main menu Utilities Remove files after archival Delete files from archives Verify archived files Pack the archive index Build index from archive volume Clean archive indexes Set alternate display colors Archive Summary Statistics Quit to Main page 25 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Manual Archive Processing The manual archive selection process lists all the files and directories on your hard disk and lets you individually select files for archival. While you are scrolling through the lists of files, you may view the contents of text and WordPerfect files using Stowaway's file viewers. You may sort file lists by file name, age, size, name or extension. Depending on your setup options, you may enter a description for each file to be archived. File descriptions are stored in the archive index and are used to locate files to be restored. Start manual archive processing by selecting <A> from the Main Menu followed by <S> from the Archive sub-menu. Entering archive file descriptions When you mark a file for archival, Stowaway may ask the following question: Do you want to enter descriptions for the files to be archived? (Y/N) Stowaway asks this question when setup options indicate descriptions are to be entered for archived files. If you want to take the time to enter descriptions for each file selected for archival, answer YES to this question. You will be prompted for a description each time you mark a file for archival. If you mark an entire directory for archival, you will be asked for a description for each file in the directory. Request window for file description The following description entry message is displayed to accept description data. Enter description for C:\WP\REQUEST.LTR <Enter> accepts, <Esc> Cancels Even though you are asked to enter a description for every file, you can press the <Enter> key without entering descriptive text to page 26 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft indicate no description is to be maintained for the file. To stop the prompting for descriptions, press the <Escape> key without entering any description data. You will not be prompted again during this archive process. The Archive File Selection Display Manual archiving involves scrolling through file names on your hard disk and marking specific ones to be archived. The display shows files for one directory at a time. Entries for the current and root directory are always sorted to the top of the list along with other subdirectories defined in the listed directory. The top border of the display indicates the drive and name of the directory being displayed. The bottom border gives brief help about keys used to terminate the selection process. The right hand border of the display holds a scroll bar for mouse control of the list (not shown above). Also not shown is a highlighted selection bar that covers one entry at a time in the list. The selection bar's location is modified by using the UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT cursor control keys. As files are selected, a status window in the upper right portion of the display shows the number of files selected as well as the number of characters to be archived. This helps you to know when you have archived enough data to free up a desired amount of disk space. The Drive Statistics window Total field shows space available on your hard drive. The Used value shows the amount of hard disk space currently in use. The Free space value shows the amount of hard disk space currently available for use. The Projected freespace field shows the amount of space that will be available on your hard disk after archive processing is complete. This field is incremented as files are tagged for archival. The Space Tagged and Files Tagged fields are also incremented to show how much data you have marked for archival. page 27 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Selecting Groups of Files for Archival If you plan to assign group names to files to be archived, you must select and archive only one group of files at a time. Group names are assigned to all files selected for an archive process. Group names are selected after all files have been marked. Group names are categories for keeping track of archive files. See the information about group names documented later in this manual for a complete explanation of archive groups. Archive File Selection Operation The following keys are active during the manual archive selection process: <Space Bar> When positioned on a file name, it either marks the file to be archived, or if the file has already been marked, unmarks it. Filenames become highlighted in the list after they are selected for archival. A small checkmark symbol is also displayed next to the filename to indicate it is selected. <Right Arrow> Marks the file highlighted by the selection bar for archival. If the file is already marked for archival, it will remain marked. The file selection bar is also moved to the next filename in the list. <Left Arrow> Unmarks the file highlighted by the selection bar. If the file is not marked for archival it will remain unmarked. The file selection bar is also moved to the next filename in the list. <Enter> When the file selection bar is placed over a directory name, changes the list to show the selected directory. Place the highlight bar on any directory name and press the <Enter> key to change to the directory. page 28 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Stowaway remembers files marked for archival from multiple directories so you may mark files from several directories before starting archive. Special filenames of <PARENT> and <ROOT> are shown for any subdirectory listed. You may press <Enter> on the <PARENT> entry to list the files in the directory above the current directory listed. Pressing <Enter> on the <ROOT> entry lists the root directory of the currently selected drive. <F1> At any time press the <F1> key for help on the current activity. <F3> Press <F3> to bring up a temporary window to enter a DOS command or to exit to DOS. <F4> Press <F4> to bring up a window to let you change the hard disk drive to list files from. <F10> The <F10> key signals the end of file selection processing and starts the archive process. <Escape> Use the <Escape> key to terminate the manual file selection process and return to the Stowaway main menu. The names of marked files are not saved. page 29 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft <S> Press the <S> key to activate a selection window to specify an alternate sort sequence for the file list. Sorting by date lets you quickly find the old files that are good candidates for archival. Sorting by size lets you quickly identify the largest files that will free more disk space when archived. <T> Tag all files in the currently displayed directory. After tagging all files you can untag selected files to be omitted from processing. <U> Untag all tagged files in the currently displayed directory. <V> Press the <V> key to View text or WordPerfect files. The file viewer can examine up to 500 lines of a file. Use the viewer to confirm the contents of a file before deciding to archive it. Use the cursor control keys to control the viewing of a file and press <Escape> from the viewer to return to the file list. Archiving a full directory You may position the file selection bar over any subdirectory name and press the <Right Arrow> or <Space Bar> to mark it to be archived. Stowaway will immediately present the following question C:\DIR is marked. Process all files within it? This is a reminder that you will mark the entire directory for archival as well as all directories below it. Press <Y> if this is correct. Press <N> to cancel the mark directory request. If you mark a directory for processing and are also entering file descriptions, you will be prompted to enter descriptions for all files in the directory. page 30 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Completing file selection Once you have selected one or more files for archival, press the <F10> key to exit the file selection display and proceed to start the archive process. Automatic Archive Processing Stowaway can automatically select files to be archived with your parameter specifications. The Automatic Scanning archive process lets you enter a set of archive specifications and then start archive. Files will be selected that meet your archive criteria. When you select Scan Automatic from the Stowaway menus the an form will be presented for you to complete Complete the automatic archive specification form as follows: Path to archive: Enter a directory name files are to be archived from. If this is a parent directory to other directories, files may be archived from this directory and all its subordinate directories. Pattern to archive: Enter a file pattern to be archived. *.* will select all files from the selected directories. You may specify normal DOS wildcard characters or extended wildcard specifications like *TIM*.*. This would select all files having TIM as any part of the filename. An extended wildcard specification of *T*I*M*.* indicates to select all files having the three characters T,I,M in the filename in the specified sequence. Process all subdirectories (Y/N): Specify <Y> if all subdirectories of the directory specified are also to be searched for matching filenames. Specify <N> if only the specified directory is to be searched. page 31 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Files Older than: To delete files by their age, specify a date. Stowaway will only select files older than this date for archival. You may enter dates information in the following formats: 1) Number of days old. Enter a number of days. This number of days will be subtracted from the current date. Any files older than this date will be considered candidates for archival. 2) Gregorian Date formats - The following date formats are supported. 31JAN91 01/31/91 01-31-91 Archive until this amount of freespace met: To archive files until a specified amount of hard disk space is available, enter a desired amount of hard disk free space. Archive file selection will automatically attempt to archive enough files to satisfy the desired freespace and then stop. The value can be entered as a total number of characters, or 1000's of characters (K), or 1,000,000's of characters (M). The following three examples all indicate to archive until two million characters of freespace are available on a hard disk. 2000000 2000K 2M Select only files needing backup? Each DOS file has an attribute in its directory entry indicating if has been changed since it was last backed up. Backup programs reset this indicator after backing up the file. DOS sets the indicator when the file is created and whenever it is updated. To archive files that have changed enter <Y> for this value. Only files with this indicator set will be selected for archival. page 32 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Reset ARCHIVE attribute after archival? If you want Stowaway to reset the backup indicator in a file's directory entry after archival specify <Y>. If <N> is specified, the backup indicator will be left in its same condition after archival. A value of <Y> is only effective if files are not deleted after the archival process, After completing the form presented on the display, press <F10> to begin the archival process. Stowaway will scan directories selecting files for archival. If you want to terminate archive processing before starting, press <Escape> to return to Stowaway's main menu. Specifying Archive Groups Archive groups... After selecting files for archival, you may assign them a group name. Group names let you categorize files in the archives. At restore time the group name becomes one of the criteria you can specify when selecting files. There is no limit to the number of groups you may define to Stowaway. New groups may be created at any time. When Stowaway prompts you for a group name, you are presented with a scrollable list of existing groups to select from. You may select any previously defined group or add a new one. To select a group to be associated with the archive set, use the UP and DOWN arrow keys to position the scroll bar on any desired group and press <Enter>. Adding an archive group New groups may be defined when examining the group name selection list. To define a new group, select the top item on the display <add a new group>. You will be prompted to enter a new group name and description. After entering the group information press <F10> to accept the new group definition. Press <Escape> to cancel the group definition request. page 33 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Group names may contain any alphanumeric characters. Groups are sorted by name when listed so, selecting a good scheme for naming groups will cause them to be displayed in a manner where they can be quickly identified and selected. Consider a scheme like the following: DOS_UTILITIES DOS_SHAREWARE DOS_SHELLS WP_LETTERS WP_MEMOS HOME_FINANCE HOME_GAMES Press <F10> to accept the group. Press <Escape> to cancel. page 34 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Archive Processing When all file and group selection processing is complete, archive processing starts. Archive begins by displaying an Archive Status display. The archive status display keeps you informed of the progress of archival. It contains the following information: Status Bar The status bar at the left side of the display gives a graphic status of the completion of Stowaway. Totals The totals lines show the number of files and total characters to be processed, completed, and remaining to be processed. Current File Shows information about the file currently being copied to diskette. Disk Statistics The disk statistics in the lower right portion of the display show the amount of space used on the archive volume and the space remaining. This is useful to help you to know when you will need another archive volume. For large archive tasks you might want to wait to insert a new volume before going for that short break. Request for archive volumes Immediately upon starting archive you will be asked to insert a new archive volume in the drive. Stowaway has searched its volume indexes and found volume one to be the next archive volume to use. Place the volume in the drive and press <Enter> to start the page 35 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft archive processing. Press <Escape> to the volume request message to be presented with additional options you have when mounting a volume. Stowaway options indicate when you may safely quit processing. When a new volume is requested to hold the second part of a file that spans multiple volumes, you may not quit processing without having to restart archive for the file being processed. Select Continue by pressing <C> and you will be returned to the display requesting the volume to be placed in the drive. When Stowaway is requesting a volume from a previous archive process, you may press <S> to start another new disk instead of appending the new archive data to the last used volume. Use this feature when you do not have access to the previous archive volume. You might have stored the used disks of your archive set in another location, or loaned them to someone. Recovering from disk write errors If DOS should encounter an disk write error when writing to the archive volume, you will be presented with messages and options to select to continue from the error. This only applies if the DOS VERIFY flag (see setup) is set on. A message is presented after DOS issues its message to RETRY, FAIL, or ABORT after a disk I/O error. If you selected RETRY and processing continued successfully, the file was archived successfully. If you selected FAIL or IGNORE, the file was not archived correctly. Select one of the following responses to indicate how to proceed after the I/O error: Quit Stop archiving immediately. Continue Normally The retry was successful and you want to continue archiving. If the error was caused by a faulty volume, you may want to Try again, or Try a new volume to move the data for the file from the questionable volume area. page 36 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Try again Archive the file again on a new area of the same archive volume. This will skip over the faulty area of a volume. We recommend using Force New disk and try again over this option since it is better not to try and archive any more data on a potentially faulty volume. Force new disk and try again (Recommended) Stop writing to the current volume. Ask for a new volume and start archiving for the same file again. The file will be written to the new volume and archive processing will continue. Completing archive Before archive completes you will see the following message presented on the display. This message is for your information only. You do not need to take any action. Stowaway is letting you know it is backing up its archive indexes to the output archive volume. Saving Archive index backup to disk. Please wait Once archival completes the following message will be presented on the display. This is to give you a chance to examine archive statistics before leaving the archive status display. Press enter to indicate you are ready to continue.. The last message shown by archive relates to your archive volume. Since Stowaway has saved its indexes on the last volume it used, you should always keep track of this volume. Remove the archive volume from the drive and file it so you know it was the last disk used. Turn it sideways, upside-down, backwards, or just place it in front of all other volumes. A easy way to keep track of the last archive volume used is to store volumes with the used volumes behind the unused volumes. page 37 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Keep rotating the disks as they are used. Always keep the last disk used in the front of the set. In the following figure, assume volume 3 was the last archive volume data was archived to. Once Stowaway has returned you back to its main menu you may start another archive or end Stowaway to return back to your operating system. page 38 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Restore Restore is the process of copying an archived file back to normal disk storage. Restore is a copy, not a move. The archive copy remains intact exactly as before the restore. You may delete the restored copy and still have access to the data through the archives. Restore brings a file back to your hard disk from the "archives". Stowaway makes locating and restoring files easy. Several features are included to help you organize the archives and locate files in them. Archive data is stored in a special compressed form on consecutive disks of offline storage. The special compressed format obviously saves disk space but also increases archive performance. Stowaway is needed to restore any file archived by it. Stowaway indexes all archived files in a set of hard disk indexes. When you search for a file to be restored, Stowaway's hard disk indexes are used to locate information about the file. Stowaway gets a disk location and a disk number from the index and asks you to place the disk in the drive. It then reads the data and writes it back to your hard disk. Restore begins by asking for specifications for files to be restored. There are three levels of file selection: 1. First you may optionally enter filename, pathname, text to find in file descriptions and date ranges the file must fall within. 2. Optionally specify a group name files are to be selected from. This will help isolate selection to a category of files in the archives. 3. Files matching the first two specifications may be displayed in a scrollable list for your examination and manual selection. Once files are selected, restore processing begins. page 39 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Entering Restore Criteria (level 1) After selecting the Restore option from Stowaway's main menu you will be presented with the following display which asks for the first level of file selection criteria. You may skip this selection level by pressing <F10>. Stowaway will assume all files qualify this selection level. Drive : * Enter a drive letter indicating the drive files were originally archived from. '*' indicates to select files from archived from any drive. Path : * Enter a pathname where files were archived from. '*' indicates to select files archived from any directory name. A directory specification may end with '*' to indicate the files are to be selected from any directory name beginning with the name specified up to the *. Valid specifications are: \ \WP \WP* \WP\LETTERS \WP\LETTERS\ Pattern to restore : *.* Enter a complete filename or wildcard pattern name of the archived files. Extended wildcard capabilities allow you to enter multiple * in a name specification. The * indicates any number of characters may exist in this portion of the name. Valid specifications are: AUTOEXEC.BAT AUTO*.BAT AUTO*.* *.* *TOEX*.BAT page 40 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft *U*O*X*.BAT Restore TO directory: Optionally enter a target pathname where files are to be restored. This is a full pathname including drive letter. If no directory is specified, the files will be restored to their original directories and drive. Valid specifications are: C:\WP \WP C:\WP\LETTERS\ Select files where description contains: If you have entered descriptive text for files archived, you may select files based on the contents of descriptive text. Enter any word or phrase to be found in descriptive text. Only files with descriptive information containing this text will be selected for restore. The text will be searched ignoring upper/lower case. Select files archived AFTER this date : Optionally enter a date to reject files last created or updated on or prior to the date. Select files archived BEFORE this date: Optionally enter a date to reject files last created or updated on or after the date. Selecting Group to Restore (level 2) If you would like to further qualify your file selection by selecting only files archived under a group name, scroll through the group list and chose a group. To select a group to restore files from, use the UP and DOWN arrow page 41 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft keys to position the scroll bar on any desired group and press <Enter>. To ignore groups and select files from all groups, select the top item (all groups) and press enter. Listing Files to Restore (level 3) The third level of restore file selection is manual selection of exact files to be restored. Manual selection is an optional step. If you have already specified sufficient criteria to select all files to be restored, press <R> to restore all selected files. If you would like to list all files matching the selection criteria entered, press <L>. You will be presented with a scrollable selection list of files. Restore File Select List Processing Scrollable selection lists provide complete information about files maintained in Stowaway's archives. Due to the amount of data stored about each file, Stowaway provides four different views of this list. Each view shows a different category of information about archived files. page 42 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Contents of archive list views View # 1 Filename DOS File Date DOS File Time Original file Size Original Pathname View # 2 Filename Archive Date Archive Time Archive Size Compression Percent Archive Volume ID. View # 3 Filename File Description View # 4 Filename Group Name Expiration Date Starting archive volume Ending Archive volume Offset where data stored on volume When the scrollable selection list is first displayed VIEW #1 is shown. To change between the three different views, press the <F6> key. As <F6> is repeatedly pressed the next view is shown. VIEW #1 is shown again after VIEW #4. page 43 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft The following keys are active when the restore selection list is displayed: <Space Bar> Toggles selection - marks unmarked files to be selected for restore. Unmarks marked files to remove them from being selected. <Right Arrow> Marks file to be selected for restore. Advances the file selection bar to the next file. Holding down the key will mark a series of files. <Left Arrow> Unmarks file selected for restore. Advances the file selection bar to the next file. Holding down the key will unmark a series of files. <F1> Help <F2> Zoom. When first displayed, the scrollable list is shown in reduced size to make room for help text at the bottom of the display. Press <F2> to zoom the screen larger. The help text at the bottom of the screen will disappear. Press <F2> again to reduce the display and view the help at the bottom. <F3> Enter a DOS Command <F5> Locate text. If you have entered descriptive text for archived files, you may search for words or phrases in the text. Press <F5> to request a window to enter the text to be found. Stowaway will search all displayed files for the entered text. Only files containing the text will be displayed. <F6> Show next VIEW. Toggles between the three different views of the archive file list. page 44 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft <F10> Start restore. After you have marked one or more files to be restored, press <F10> to accept the selected items and start restore. <Escape> Exit file selection list and quit restore processing. <S> Sort the list. Press <S> to display a selection menu of alternate sort sequences for the restore selection list. Name order Sorts by filename Directory order Sort by filename within directory name. daTe order Sort by the date the file was last updated or created (before it was archived). Archive date Sort files in sequence by the date they were archived. Starting Restore After starting restore Stowaway determines the volumes needed to restore the files and immediately requests you place the first volume needed in the input drive. Locate the requested volume from your set of archive volumes and place it in the drive. You may terminate restore at any time by pressing <Escape> when Stowaway is requesting an input volume. All files restored to this point of processing are restored correctly. Other files selected will need to be selected again in a subsequent restore process to be restored. page 45 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Restore Processing The restore status display keeps you informed of the progress of restoring files. It has the following basic contents: Status Bar The status bar at the left side of the display gives a graphic status of the completion of Stowaway. Totals The totals lines show the number of files and total characters to be processed, completed, and remaining to be processed. Current File Shows information about the file currently being restored. Disk Statistics The disk stats shown in the lower right portion of the display show how much space is used on the target hard disk and how much freespace remains. Overlaying Files with duplicate Names If Stowaway finds that a file with the same name as the one being restored already exists in the target directory, it may overwrite the file with the archive version, bypass restoring the file, or compare the dates and times of the two files and restore the file only if it is a more recent copy than the version on disk. Stowaway Setup options let you specify any of these alternatives as an action to automatically be taken during restore. A special setup option of "Ask" indicates restore processing is to ask what action to take each time a duplicate file name is found. The following question is asked. page 46 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft File B.BAT already exists. Ok to replace? Yes/No/Update/Continuous update/continuous Replace Press Y, N, U, C, or R to indicate the action to take. <Escape> immediately terminates restore. Following are explanations of possible responses: <Yes> Replace the file immediately. The archive file will overlay the already existing file. <No> Do not restore the file. Leave the file on the hard disk. <Update> Restore the file if it is a newer version than the file on the target drive. If the archive file is older than the disk file, bypass restoring this file. <Continuous update> This is the same response as <Update> with the additional feature of indicating Stowaway is not to ask this question again if another duplicate file name is found. A answer of <Update> will be assumed for all future instances of this situation during this restore process. <continuous Replace> This is the same response as <Replace> with the additional feature that Stowaway is not to ask this question again if another duplicate file name is found. An answer of <Replace> will be assumed for all future instances of this situation during this restore process. page 47 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Completing Restore After all files have been restored the following message will be presented over the Restore Status Display. It is an informational message to let you know the last action taken by Stowaway. Press <Enter> to acknowledge the message and return to Stowaway's main menu. Utility Functions The utility menu off Stowaway's main menu provides access to functions supporting Stowaway archive and restore functions. Select Utilities from the main menu to access the following menu of options. Utilities Remove files after archival Delete files from archives Verify archived files Pack the archive index Build index from archive volume Clean archive indexes Set alternate display colors Archive summary statistics Quit to Main Utilities - Remove files after archival Stowaway options let you archive files without deleting files after archival is complete. When you use this feature Stowaway keeps a list of the files archived. This list may be used to later delete the files from the original hard disk. The purpose of this feature is to provide an optional capability to let you archive data and verify archive disks before deleting the original files. Use this utility option to delete the last set of files archived from your system. A message will appear indicating files are being deleted. Once all files are deleted you will be presented with a message indicating all files have been successfully deleted. page 48 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Utilities - Delete files from archives When you no longer need to keep files in the archives the Delete Archive File function will find selected archive file index entries and remove them. The Delete Archive File function selects the files to be deleted in the same way restore processing selects files. You will be presented with a display asking for specifications for files to be deleted. Complete the form and press <F10> accept the specifications. Stowaway will search the archive indexes for all files matching the selection criteria. You will be presented with a selection list similar to the one presented during restore processing. Select the specific files to be removed from the archives. When done with specific file selection press <F10>. Stowaway will remove each index entry from the archives. You will no longer be able to restore the files with Stowaway. Archive index size will be reduced and future archive index lists will not show these files. NOTE - This process only logically removes the files from the archive index. To actually release the space they occupy in the archive index you must use the PACK ARCHIVE INDEX utility provided. Utilities - Verify archived files Use verify to confirm archival has correctly archived data. Sometimes you may be unsure of the validity of your archives. This might happen if you suspect faulty archive volumes were used, or a drive might not be functioning properly. Stowaway provides this function to read archive data and verify it can be used to restore the files. Volume verification is quick and easy as it only requires a quick read of archive volume data. No data is actually written to the hard disk. Two verification processes actually happen. First, DOS verifies all the data can be read from the archive disk. Second, a CRC check verifies data is accurate by arithmetically verifying the data in the archives is the same as the data was on the hard disk page 49 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft before it was archived. Archive verification may verify a part of the archives, or an entire archive set. Upon selecting the verify function you will be presented with a specification display similar to restore processing. Indicate the qualifications of all files to be verified. You are asked to fill in the following fields: Drive to verify: Enter the drive letter where the files were originally archived from. (I.E. C, D) Path to verify: Optionally enter the pathname where the files were archived from. If no path is specified, files from all paths will be selected. I.E. \LETTERS \PICTURES Pattern to verify: Enter a filename pattern to verify. When not specified, all file patterns will be selected. Archived before/after: Select files by the date they were archived. You may use one or both of the date specifications. Press <F10> to accept specifications and start verification. <Esc> to quit. Like restore, you will be asked to place each archive volume in the input drive until all data is verified. You will be notified with error message displays if any errors are found in the data. Utilities - Pack the archive index Stowaway archive indexes periodically need reorganization to recover space released by expired of deleted archive files. Packing of the archive indexes performs two functions. First, it examines expiration dates assigned to each archived file, and deletes expired files from the archives. Second, it reorganizes the archive index to recover space from deleted file index records. Although the packing process will always attempt to release space left by deleted file index records, you may optionally decide if page 50 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft you want expired files released from the archives. You may want to bypass releasing expired files if there is no real need to release the space their index records occupy. The biggest reason to remove expired data is to unclutter the archives. If this is not a problem, you can defer removing expired files in case their data is needed at some later time. Immediately after selecting the Pack option from the utilities menu you will be presented with the following question and options: Do you want to pack the archive index file? Yes / No / Expired files / Escape Respond <Yes> to recover space released by deleted archive index records. Expired archive index entries will not be processed and will remain in the archives. Respond <No> to cancel the request to pack the files without taking any further action. Respond <Expired files> to delete expired archive index entries and to recover space released by deleted archive index records. Once your response is entered, the following message will appear indicating the index pack process is active. Now removing deleted records from archive index When index packing is complete you will be returned to Stowaway main menus. Utilities - Build index from archive volume As Stowaway archives files, it saves information about each file in a set of indexes on the hard disk. Since the indexes are critical to the system, they are backed up to the last archive disk at the end of each archive process. This takes a little time and disk space but ensures indexes are always backed up and are kept with archives. Since the archive indexes are kept on archive volumes, each archive page 51 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft set becomes a portable set of files you may take to another computer for use. To use any archive set, the archive indexes must exist on your hard disk. If they are somehow lost or not available on the computer where you want to restore files, you must first restore the index from the archive volumes. The indexes are always found on the last one or two volumes of the archive set. It is your responsibility to keep track of these disks since Stowaway does not know disk numbers without its indexes. During index recovery Stowaway will ask you to place the last used archive volume in the drive. It is always important to keep track of the last archive volume you use. If you have lost track of the last archive volume, use the DOS directory command to display the files on each archive volume. The volume with the most recent file dates is the last disk used. Stowaway immediately asks for the last archive volume when index restore is started. Place the volume in the drive and press <Enter>. In some cases Stowaway may ask for a second volume if it determines part of the indexes backed up are split from a previous volume. Stowaway will read the indexes and put them on the hard drive. You will be notified when the indexes are properly restored. Utilities - Clean archive indexes This function of Stowaway deletes the current set of archive indexes. Its purpose is to delete test versions of archive index sets before reusing them. Your primary set of indexes should never be deleted as they are required for restoring data. After an archive index set is deleted, you will no longer be able to restore files from the archive set. You can use the restore archive index function to replace the indexes on the hard disk. After selecting the index delete function you will be prompted to verify you really do want to complete this process: Respond <Yes> to continue the process and delete the current archive index set. Respond <No> to cancel the index deletion process and return to page 52 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Stowaway main menus. Once the indexes have been deleted, you may create them again by archiving more data with Stowaway. Utilities - Set alternate display colors Stowaway lets you change the colors of all its display windows to any colors of your choice. Setting alternate display colors involves setting NORMAL, REVERSE, HIGHLIGHT, and BORDER colors for each different type of window. When changing colors, you are presented with a menu of each window type used by Stowaway. You may change colors on any or all window types. Window colors are stored permanently on disk in the options file so they will be used each time you use Stowaway. When you are finished setting colors, press <Exit> to return to Stowaway's menus. You are presented with a screen with four major color types to pick across the top and with a screen full of color combinations below. Use the <Space Bar> to move between each color type. Pressing the space bar indicates the current color selection for the active type is to be accepted. Use the <Arrow Keys> to position the selection box on the color combination to be used for the current color type. When you are positioned on the desired color, press the <Space Bar>. Press <Enter> to accept all colors and return to the window type menu. You can then change colors on another window type. Press <Escape> to return to the window selection menu and leave the colors as they were originally defined. page 53 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Utilities - Archive summary statistics This option displays statistical information about archived data. Upon selecting this option, Stowaway will scan the archive indexes and show archive statistical information. Command Line operation Stowaway is normally operated through its menu structure. This provides a simple technique for archiving files that reassures you at every step with displays and questions to let you make decisions. More experienced users may want to use Stowaway's command line interface to archive files. When the command line operation is used, Stowaway will take all its basic instructions from the command line and start the archival process. It will still require the proper disks be placed in the drives and may ask for other decisions to be made based on your options. Although not totally automated it provides a quick start to archiving specific data. A typical use of command line operation is to start Stowaway to archive specific files. Following is a sample command to archive all files in the directory named \TESTDIR\.. STOW \TESTDIR\*.* The Stowaway command line format STOW path /B /BA /D:01-01-91 /DEL /EV:vol /EX:date /F:space /ID:xxx /ND /P /S /SV:vol /RA /R Command parameter explanations path Specify pathname to be archived. STOW C:\LETTERS\*.* STOW \LETTERS /B Select only files with the DOS ARCHIVE (BACKUP) indicator set. page 54 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft /BA Batch file operation. This parameter indicates Stowaway is to attempt to complete processing without prompting the user. ARCHIVE COMPLETE and other such messages will not wait for a user response. Stowaway menus will not be used. You still may be prompted for volumes to be placed in drives and to decide how to handel error or exception conditions. /D:xxx Stowaway is to limit its file selection to files older than the specified date. Use to free hard disk space by scanning a directory and archiving "old" files. Dates can have multiple formats. See information in the archive section of this manual for more information about different date formats. /D:31DEC91 /D:01/01/91 /D:60 <== over 60 days old /DEL If your Stowaway options are set to NOT delete files after they have been archived, this parameter will let you override that specification and force Stowaway to delete files after they have been successfully archived. /EV:vol During restore, it is sometimes desirable to only restore files in certain volumes. You may specify a range of disk volumes by using the /EV and /SV parameters. For example, to restore the files after volume 6 and before volume 9, the command line would be: STOW /SV:6 /EV:9 /EX:date Specify an expiration date to give to files selected for archival. /F:nnn Archive until nnn characters of hard disk space available. Use this parameter to stop archiving files when the hard disk being processed has a specified amount of free space available. page 55 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft The freespace parameter has three different forms (characters, K=1000's of characters, M=1,000,000s of characters). Each of the following examples will stop archiving when 1,000,000 characters of hard disk freespace exist. /F:1000000 /F:100K /F:1M /ID:xxx Alternative archive index set id. Specify any three characters to use an alternate index set. For more information about alternate archive index sets, see the heading about Archive Index Sets in the manual. When not specified it is assumed the value will be "STO". /ID:TOM /ND Normally options are set to delete files after they have been archived. Use this parameter to prevent the archived files from being deleted. /R You may also accomplish restore from the command line. Specify a path as if you were archiving, and append /R to the command line. /RA After archiving files, if you want Stowaway reset the Archive attribute, select this option /S If you already know the archive volume Stowaway will use, you may place it in the drive prior to starting Stowaway and specify this parameter to have Stowaway assume the volume is present. Stowaway will not ask you to place it in the drive during archival. This parameter is designed for those users archiving to huge capacity disk devices where volume mounting is not normally necessary. page 56 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft /SV:vol To start the restore process with a certain diskette, use this command. For example, to restore only files on disk 6 and above, use the command: STOW /SV:6 Specifying options through DOS environment variables Any Stowaway command line parameters may be placed in DOS environment variables to be effective each time Stowaway is started. Use the DOS SET command to add the parameter to the environment string. The environment variable name used by Stowaway is STOW. The following example demonstrates the most common use the environment variable for Stowaway. In this example, the SET command is used to cause Stowaway to use an alternate index set identifier of TOM each time it is started. SET STOW=/ID:TOM See your DOS manual for more information about the SET command. The SET command is often placed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file on a user's hard disk so it may automatically be issued each time your system is started. page 57 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Archive Maintenance Multiple Archive sets Stowaway lets you keep and use multiple archive sets on the same computer system. Although not often necessary, this feature is useful in many situations. Some examples are: -- To create a special archive set apart from your normal set to move files from one system to another. -- To create separate archive sets for multiple users of a system. -- To test your current archive set by restoring its indexes to a different archive set identifier. An archive set consists of hard disk archive indexes and all archive volumes holding files referenced by those indexes. Archive sets are given three character set identifiers. This identifier is normally "STO" but may be altered when starting Stowaway by using the /ID:xxx command parameter. An alternate archive set identifier may also be established by placing the /ID:xxx parameter in Stowaway's DOS environment variable. Archive set indexes consist of a set of three index files and a Stowaway options file. These files exist on the hard disk in Stowaway's directory. The normal files are named as follows: STOSAWAY.DAT STOVOLIX.DAT STOGRPIX.DAT STOFILIX.DAT Notice that each file name begins with the three characters "STO". These identify this as the main archive set for Stowaway. When you start Stowaway with an alternative archive set identifier using the /ID:xxx parameter, a new archive set is created with the names changed to begin with the alternative set id. Alternate archive indexes may be created new by starting Stowaway with the /ID:xxx parameter and then archiving files. They may also be created by starting Stowaway with the /ID:xxx parameter and page 58 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft restoring archive indexes from archive volumes. The indexes from the archive volume will be assigned the archive set identifier used to start Stowaway. Alternate archive sets are identical in function and usage to the normal index Stowaway uses. When using alternate index identifiers, be careful to use the correct index set for the files you are processing. Backing up the indexes The archive indexes are backed up to archive volumes after each archive process. This insures the archive set is always complete. Your system backup procedures may also backup the archive indexes each time it processes. This provides redundant backups of archive indexes. Each backup is valid and useful when needing to recover archive indexes. It is recommended to let your backup system continue to backup the archive indexes as full hard disk recovery procedures will be simplified. If you do not backup archive indexes with your normal backup system and need to recover your entire hard disk, you will also separately be required to recover the archive indexes. Making copies of archive data Each archive volume is in a normal DOS format. Archive volumes may be copied using DOS DISKCOPY, COPY, or XCOPY commands. For safety reasons you may want to take a copy of archive information and store it at an offsite location. To do this, use the DISKCOPY command to copy an archive volume to another volume. Store the original archive volume back with the archive set, and take the copied volumes to your offsite location. When you only have a single drive to read and write a specific disk format use the DOS DISKCOPY command as follows. It will use memory to copy a volume to a new volume. The drive letters for the source and new volumes are the same. DOS will issue messages indicating what volumes to place in the drives and when. DISKCOPY A: A: page 59 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft If you have multiple drives able to read and write the same volume format, use the DISKCOPY command with different drive letters. The first drive identifier is for the source volume, the second letter is for the drive to hold the new volume. DISKCOPY A: B: Archive disks may be copied to different disk formats as long as the new disk has enough capacity to hold all information on the source volume. Once archived, the archive data cannot again be split across multiple archive volumes. The Context Sensitive Help System Stowaway provides immediate help about its operation at every point of its processing. A comprehensive help system may be interrogated at any time by pressing the <F1> key. When <F1> is pressed, Stowaway automatically determines what function is active and action is being requested. It will search a help index and retrieve information about your current activity. Help systems that being up help about your current activity are referred to as "context sensitive" meaning they are aware of the context in which they are requested. In addition to being context sensitive, Stowaway help system is layered to let you not only examine help about your current activity, but also lets you browse through the help displays to learn about related topics or other aspects of Stowaway. Press the <Home> key any time you are in the help system to display the help menu. The intelligent help system may be examined by using the following navigation keys... <Enter> Takes you to the next related screen <Esc> Takes you back to the processing screen <Alt> Allows you to peek back at the processing screen to review what you are reading help about. <PgUp> Will take you up to a more general topic in the help system <Home> Displays the main help menu page 60 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft The LEFT, RIGHT, UP, and DOWN keys are available when viewing screens smaller than the full page. Use them to move the help window around on the display to view areas hidden by the help window. System Requirements Operating system compatibilities Stowaway must run on a 100% compatible PC, XT, or AT system and requires DOS 3.2 or above for its operation. Stowaway may operate on some other nonstandard systems but we cannot guarantee its correct operation nor make any promises to make it compatible with those systems. Archive device compatibilities Stowaway uses only standard DOS disk devices for holding archive data. The obvious devices are various forms of 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 diskette systems. Stowaway is also designed to use large format removable disk devices as archive media. These devices must have a standard DOS format and must appear to DOS as a normal disk device. Troubleshooting I/O errors on disks If you should have a problem restoring data from a damaged or faulty archive volume take the following steps to attempt to circumvent the problem. -- Try turning the disk in the sleeve with your fingers to make sure it is loose and will spin. If 5 1/4 diskettes appear too tight, you can relieve some pressure placed on the magnetic media by drawing each edge of the diskette across the edge of a table applying a reasonable amount of pressure. This will expand the area inside the jacket page 61 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft for the media to move. -- Attempt to copy the diskette to another diskette. If the copy is successful, attempt to use the new disk to restore the data. -- Take the volume in error to another drive on another machine to attempt to restore the data. -- When all else fails, use the "FAIL" option during archive volume read error detection to indicate archive is to attempt to read as much data as possible. Error Messages Stowaway has comprehensive error and exception checking designed into every component of the system. Stowaway's help systems contains help about messages issued by Stowaway. Whenever an error message is displayed, press the <F1> key for a complete explanation of the error and suggested actions to take as a result of the error. Technical Support Patri-Soft may be reached for technical support through a variety of sources. Normal technical support hours are 8:30AM through 5:00 PM Monday through Friday (PST). You may contact us through the following methods... CompuServe 76347,2477 Phone 714-352-2820 BBS 714-352-2825 FAX 714-352-1527 Mail: Patri-Soft 5225 Canyon Crest Drive Suite 71-358 Riverside, CA 92507 A special order line is available if you would like to purchase using VISA or MasterCard or discuss other purchase options. When calling for technical support please have the following page 62 Stowaway User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft information ready so we may serve you efficiently: a. The exact version of Stowaway you are using. Stowaway main menu contains this data. b. An exact problem description c. screen print of the Stowaway directory and all files it contains. d. The software configuration of your system including DOS version, AUTOEXEC.BAT contents as well as CONFIG.SYS contents. e. The hardware configuration of your system. A good problem description indicates exactly what you were doing when you encountered the error, and exactly what symptoms occurred as a result of the error. Please avoid the following problem descriptions. They are much too brief to begin to analyze. Poor problem descriptions: a. Archive is not working. b. The machine will not read my disk. c. I can't restore my indexes d. The system fails during archive or restore. Following are examples of better problem descriptions: a. Archive is failing. Stowaway asks for an archive volume and after I place it in the drive, the drive light comes on, goes off, and Stowaway indicates no disk is in the drive. b. I am attempting to restore indexes from an archive volume and Stowaway indicates the indexes are not present. I have displayed the contents of the last used diskette and it appears to be ok. Its contents are... page 63 STOWAWAY User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Index /B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 /BA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 /D:xxx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 /DEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 /EX:date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 /F:nnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 /ID:xxx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 /ND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 /S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Archival Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Archival vs Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 ARCHIVE attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 file descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 File Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 File Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 volume preparing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Archive group adding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 archive index backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 build from archive volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 clean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 packing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Archive sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Archive volume copies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Archive volumes mount request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Archiving files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 BBS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Clean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 54 Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 CompuServe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 41 page 64 STOWAWAY User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Directories changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 disk I/O error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 starting new volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Distribution diskette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 DOS Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 DOS environment SET STOW= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Duplicate file overlay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Expiration Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 FAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 File descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Freespace archive until freespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Group Associating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Help System Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 I/O errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 INSTALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Locate text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Menus main . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Options environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Overlaying duplicate files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Pack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Quick Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Replace restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 page 65 STOWAWAY User's Guide Copyright 1991 by Patri-Soft Saving Archive index backup to disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Selecting directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Selecting files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Sets Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 restore list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 STOFILIX.DAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 STOGRPIX.DAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 STOSAWAY.DAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 STOVOLIX.DAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 STOW.EXE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 STOW.HLP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 SYSTEM Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 System options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Technical Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 TROUBLESHOOTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Update restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 build archive index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 clean archive index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 delete files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 display colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 pack the archive index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 remove files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 verify archived files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 VIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Viewing files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Volumes Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 page 66