Changing Drives(MS-DOS)

                                                                                 

This section describes how to change drives. Changing drives is useful if you

want to work with files that are on a different drive.

So far, you have been working with drive C. You have other drives you can use

to store information. For example, drive A is your first floppy disk drive. The

files and directories on drive A are located on the floppy disk in the drive. (You

might also have a drive B, which contains the files and directories stored on the

floppy disk in that drive.)

Before you begin this section, make sure your command prompt looks like the

following:

C:\FRUIT>

o To change to and view files on a different drive

1. Insert a 3.5" floppy disk in drive A label- side up. Make sure the disk clicks

into the drive.

1. Type the following at the command prompt:

a:

Note that the command prompt changed to the following:

A:\>

This message may appear:

Not ready reading drive A

Abort, Retry, Fail?

If you see this message, the disk may not be inserted properly. Place the disk label-side

up in the disk drive, and make sure the disk clicks into the disk drive. Then, type r for

Retry. If this message appears again, press F for Fail, and then type b: at the command

prompt. If you no longer see this message, type b: instead of a: throughout the rest of the

tutorial.

There must be a floppy disk in the drive that you want to change to.

2. Change back to drive C by typing the following at the command prompt:

c:

Your command prompt should return to the following:

C:\FRUIT>

When you type a drive letter followed by a colon, you change to that drive. The drive

letter that appears in the command prompt shows which drive is the current drive. Unless

you specify otherwise, any commands you type are carried out on the current drive and in

the current directory.

So far, all the commands you typed were carried out on the current drive and in the

current directory. You can also carry out a command on a drive that isn't current. For

example, you can view the files on a disk in drive A without switching to drive A by

following this procedure.

o To view the contents of the WINDOWS directory on drive C

1. Type the following at the command prompt:

dir c:\windows

A list of the files in the DOS directory on drive C should scroll past on your screen.