Epson EQUITY II+, User Manual

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Using Two Diskette Drives
Operating systems usually expect the computer to have at least two
physical disk drives. Normally, MS-DOS recognizes drives A and B for two
diskette drives, and C for the hard disk drive.
A typical way to use a two-drive system is to load MS-DOS from drive
A, run your application software from the same drive, and use drive B to
store your data files.
Note:
You can load MS-DOS from an application software diskette if
that diskette contains the operating system files including
COMMAND.COM.
Using a Single Diskette Drive
If your system has only one diskette drive, MS-DO’S treats the single
drive as two logical drives. This helps you perform operations that normally
require two diskette drives.
For example, if you give a command to copy from one drive to another,
MS-DOS copies from the first diskette you place in the drive to the com-
puter’s memory. Then MS-DOS prompts you to insert another diskette and
copies from memory to the diskette you place in the drive. When copying is
complete, you see a prompt to insert the original diskette.
Because you may swap diskettes this way often, it is easy to forget which
diskette is which. One way to avoid accidentally losing data is to hold the
diskette for one drive in your left hand and the diskette for the other in your
right. You can also write-protect your source diskette. For more information
on using one floppy disk drive with MS-DOS, see your MS-DOS manual.
Using a Hard Disk Drive
The optional hard disk for the Equity II+ has a capacity of 40 mega-
bytes-about 40 million characters. This is equivalent to approximately 110
double-density floppy disks. Using a hard disk reduces the number of floppy
disks you need and eliminates much of the disk-swapping you do when you
use floppy disks. You can do almost all of your work on the hard disk and
copy your files to floppy disks as needed (to make backups, for example).
While the hard disk is very reliable, it is essential to back up all your hard
disk files on floppy disks in case you lose some data accidentally. Use the
MS-DOS BACKUP program to back up your hard disk files.
User’s Guide 3-7