Today we’re going to talk about Copying, Renaming, Creating Text Files, and displaying what is inside files when using DOS. These tutorials assume that a general knowledge of DOS is already known. The first tutorial and second tutorial are excellent resources when learning DOS.

Diskcopy

Diskcopy is a command that allows us to copy the contents from one floppy disk to another. This can be useful to create backups of the contents on a floppy disk. This can be useful in easily backing up content on a floppy that contains old finical records and other important documents from the golden days of 3.5″ floppy disks.

This would make a copy of the disk that is currently in the a: (default floppy) drive. You should not use diskcopy for anything other than floppy drives, however.

Rename or Ren

Rename or Ren allows us to rename files and folders. Let us start by navigating to our directory that we want to test our files in. The default directory for vista and XP will suffice for this example.

The mkdir command creates a new directory in the current directory that we’re in so no need to put the entire path to the new directory.

The syntax for the ren/rename is a little strange and nothing like any command previously mention before in this series. Be sure the path points to the parent directory (one level above the test directory), otherwise an error will occur. The syntax is the following:

To verify the name change actually occurred, use the dir command to view the contents of the directory.

Edit

The edit command is a very basic text editor in DOS. This allows us to type basic .txt files without word wrap, without spell checker, without any configuration whatsoever.

There are two flavors of the edit command. There is the default blue background\white text option and then we can add a switch that makes the window and text the same as the default DOS window (black background and a light-gray text).

In order to activate the edit window, all we need to do is simply type “edit”.

Type a few lines of text and then press file and save as.

Once the file is saved (be sure to include the file extension “.txt”), double check to make sure the file was successfully created by using the dir command.

Type

The type command allows us to view any files created using the edit command regardless of file extension. Files encoded with Microsoft Office such as .doc or .docx cannot be viewed using the type command. The syntax of the type command is as follows:

Notice that we are able to view any file extension as long as it was encoded using the edit command in DOS. If we were to view a file encoded in Microsoft Office 2007 it would look like the following:

Notice the arbitrary characters that occur when we try to view documents encoded using MS Word. This is because the encoding format is something that DOS cannot read.

In this tutorial we will be talking about the creation of directories, removal of directories, and deleting files within DOS. When juxtaposed with navigation, this can be a powerful ally when removing viruses, recovering data on a bad hard drive, deleting stubborn files, and accomplishing simple tasks easily and effectively.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any mistakes you make while using DOS. These tutorials are merely for information purposes only.

Why?

Often, we might hear the question, “why would you wast time doing this in dos when you can just right-click and make a new folder or hit delete on a keyboard?” DOS is a useful tool to know especially if we’re dealing with data recovery in safe mode, virus removal in safe mode, fixing a problem, or using certain 3rd party utilities like Disk Wipe.

Making Directories

Making directories is a useful tool when weeding out good files from bad, old from new, and organizing files in something like safe mode.

For those that are familiar with unix commands, this will be like an old friend. The command for creating a new directory is md or mkdir, both do the same exact thing in DOS.

Although we need not navigate to the directory in which we wish to put our new directory in, we can do so by using the chdir or cd command as seen in the first tutorial. Navigating to the parent directory where we will create a child directory is usually a good idea so we can easily see if the directory was created successfully.

Choose a Directory

The above line is Vista/7 and the below line is XP.

Once we have chosen, we can create our directory in our music folder like the following:

Create the Directory

Remember that mkdir and md are both legal when using the command prompt.

This will create the directory called “test” in the drive C:\ with a path to users > music and then it will create the directory.

One common mistake that happens is that some consider the md as a single command and then you type in the name of the directory we want to create. Allow me to demonstrate:

The first example has a space between C:\ and “test” and therefore renders the command invalid. If we take a look at a website URL, we’ll see that it is almost identical.

http://www.atomicpages.net/images/stripes.png is pointing to the world wide web address called atomicpages with the TLD of .net to the directory called “images” which contains a file named “stripes.png”.

Ironically, the only difference between a URL and DOS is the type of slash that it uses. A website URL uses a forward slash (/) and DOS uses a backslash (\).

Applying this logic when creating a directory, we can see that it would make sense to merely continue until we reach the directory that will be created.

Deleting Files

Deleting files in DOS is somewhat of a godsend. At times, there are files that you cannot delete regularly using the Windows GUI so we have to resort to DOS to do our bidding for us. This also can be extremely useful when combating a virus in safe mode.

Deletion of files comes in two flavors:

Do NOT try del C:\ *.* /f or erase C:\ *.* /f unless you want your entire C: drive wiped clean.

There are times when either command is appropriate, however. If a directory or file is being stubborn and the del command is not working, try the erase command instead.

Useful Switches

To further illustrate the minor difference between del and erase, there once was a time where I had a Windows.old file from a clean install from Vista to 7. For the life of me I could not remove this directory. I tried viewing hidden files and folders, tried using del C:\windows.old /f tried rd C:\windows.old and then I tried the following: erase C:\windows.old /f and then finally I was able to remove the directory.

Using Del and Erase

A good way to practice is to go to lipsum.com and generate however many words, paragraphs, or bytes of words you want to create new .txt documents by right-clicking and selecting new from the menu in Windows. Name them different things and then navigate to our test directory and display the files within the directory via dir.

If we want to delete all of the folders, we would type the following:

Notice how DOS automatically puts \* at the end so that all files will be deleted. Erase will work and look the same as del in this situation.

Removing Directories

Removing Directories through DOS will save you heartache in the long run especially if the directory is one you could not delete normally through the Windows GUI.

rd or rmdir is the command we would use to remove a directory. If the directory is not empty we’ll get an error like the following:

Be sure the directory is empty using the erase command and then do the following:

The ..\ literally brings us up one parent directory or up one level in the file tree.

That’s it! Now you know how to use basic commands that allow you to create folders, delete files, and to remove folders from your hard drive.