This contains some additional info about this software.

- Hit the ESC button to close a form or even the program itself.
- Make some small projects for the very frequent, fast backups. Make bigger projects for less frequent updates.
- Always try to structure your work (documents) as much as possible. Including software files (like c:\program files...) in projects is mostly pointless.
- Try to avoid as much as possible to move or rename complete directories. This could cause you to change your projects files.
- If you want to save also some very old versions of your work, then simply store the backup disk and start running the project to a new empty disk. If size enough left on backup you can also move the contents in a directory (like d:\backup2004) and continue using the same backup disk!
You can do this yearly or even quarterly depending on the work volume and importancy.
- Do not make items on a backup disk read only! Running a project to such a disk can cause errors. The program will try not to update this readonly items, but precalculation will be wrong etc... . If you make items readonly then do this only on a backup disk which you won't update anymore. Source items can of course still be readonly.
- Precalculation of future free size may not always be 100% correct. This can be due to the fact that Windows works with a recycled bin. If files are deleted then space comes not always immediatly free because files are just moved to the bin... Sometimes Windows proposes to empty the bin, but this can be too late. In the case the disk is full then you'll get an I/O error and the copy process will be interrupted. During tests however, the system itself did not crash... . Also CD-software (and ZIP-software...) can work in a special way with file sizes. A way which SmartDirCopy does neither take into account!
Just take as a good rule that you don't try to use 100% of the backup disk space. Anyway, as your work normally continues to grow, there will come a day the backup disk will be full. Once you reach for instance 90% of the space, then it is about time you think about splitting up the project-file, or time to copy less projects to that destination.
Also be aware that precalculation of course won't give the right value in the case you work with CONFIRM ON and during backup you decide not to delete some items... .
- It is a known issue that very long names (often used in windows\favorites) are sometimes not copied well to CDs or other media. It can cause those files can not be cleaned anymore using this program or they can cause the program to halt suddenly. Use our file-name-checking feature (recommended) or try to avoid longer names than 127 characters. See chapter: Working with CDs/DVDs.
- Open files? In most cases it is possible to backup them but... try preventing to backup them because when you save during backup... you will not know what version has been saved, precalculation could be wrong... and so on. Also, some programs will not let them be accessed for copying... creating an error and stop the backup proces.
Known issue is error 103. This is the kind of error you get when you are trying to backup files like the windows swap file (win386.swp). Apart from Windows also other programs may have such a behaviour and create conflicts. Our advice: usually it makes no sense to backup such files and if you really want to then try to shut down the conflicting program before running your project.
- If 'non-allocatable space' appears in the project editor then ignore this. It can happen when using InCD for DVD-RWs for instances. It can be seen as a special file for that software. Your own file names should be shown fine though.
- Warning: starting several instances of SmartDirCopy and running several projects at the same time is not recommended. Only advanced users can do this.
- Network problems? If network drives do not appear or create an error 'invalid filename' in our program then you probably can fix it by choosing 'map network drive' in Windows Explorer.
See also Advantages/disadvantages
- Although there is an in-built precalcuIation, it could occur that your disk is suddenly full. I/O error 112 wil occur in that case causing you to find some more space... .
- It could be that Windows changes all the time stamps of your files for daylight-saving-time reasons, by exactly one hour. This will cause files which are identical to be copied again by SmartDirCopy. So this behaviour can occur 2 times a year. For big backups this could mean some time loss but we believe this is the safest way to handle. We do not recommend trying to change time stamps in source or destination.