NewDeal Hot Tip 1508
General Use
Document Files on Diskettes
Question:
I opened a document file on a diskette, then removed the
diskette. Even though I made no changes to the file, when
I try to close it the software promps me to insert the
diskette again. Why?
Answer:
Closing an unmodified document stored on a floppy diskette
still requires you to stick the diskette back in. The
reason is due to the way DOS handles files. DR DOS 6 insists
on having a diskette in the drive, or it will issue a
critical error, and won't stop critical erroring until you
put a diskette in. MS DOS actually writes to the diskette
when it closes the file, even if the file has not been changed,
so if the software didn't prompt you to insert the right
diskette, whatever diskette was in the drive would get corrupted.
Whenever possible, our software allows the user to abort a
disk lock (the white error dialog box doesn't just say
"Hit ENTER to continue," but also says "A to abort"). However,
there are many places where it's not possible, owing to the
way the system works. For example, NewWrite and NewDraw documents
store objects that can receive messages from the applications;
if the document is on a diskette and the object to which a
message is being sent isn't in memory, the disk lock to read
the object in from disk will not be abortable, as the system
has no means of saying, "sorry, we couldn't deliver this
message as we couldn't bring the object into memory."
This same DOS critical error issue is why you can't Save As
from one diskette to another in the same drive. To provide a
work around, the software includes Copy To in the File menu
as a way to copy the file to the hard drive, then later to
another diskette, without changing the name of the file.
Our recommendation: Work on your hard drive, then copy to
diskette
While it's possible to open and edit document files that
are stored on diskettes, interacting with files on diskettes
can be slow and there is more potential for errors or file
corruption than if you work with files on a hard drive.
For this reason, we recommend creating and editing
your files on your hard drive. Then after closing the file,
copy it to diskette from the desktop or NewManager if you like.
If you need to edit a file that is already stored on a diskette,
we recommend copying it to the hard drive and working on it there,
then copying it back to the diskette after you close it.
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Last Modified 2 Mar 1999