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	Disk Copy 6.1 Tips and Tricks

By Wesley Felter, wesf@mail.utexas.edu.

Yesterday I downloaded Apple's Disk Copy 6.1. It's been out for a while, but you'll probably need it anyway, because future Apple software will be distributed in its new format. I figured out a really convenient use for it that's saving me about 100 MB of disk space.

New Features

Disk Copy 6.1 includes all the functionality of previous versions of Disk Copy. It also includes most of the functionality of DART. It reads and mounts NDIF, Disk Copy, DART, and ShrinkWrap images. It only writes the new NDIF image format, in one of three flavors: read/write, read-only, and read-only compressed. NDIF images can be any size from 401K to 2GB.

The tip

Find a folder full of old files that you don't need to modify but may occasionally need to use. Launch Disk Copy 6.1 and drag the folder into Disk Copy's window. It will promt you for a location to save the image; set the format to read-only compressed. Wait (a while) for it to compress the files and mount the image. Compare the size of the original files to the size of the image; you'd probably get better compression with StuffIt, but this is mountable, so you have instant access to your files. The mounted image even feels faster then the original files! This is also good for files that you don't want to get accidentally modified because they appear on a locked volume.

Get it

Disk Copy 6.1 will be required to install Mac OS 7.6.1. You can get it from Apple's page.

Other solutions

Loyal reader Dennis Dimick points out that you can seamlessly manipulate StuffIt archives in the Finder using StuffIt Deluxe 4.0. This has some advantages, but it's not free.