Copying the BSJ CD by Randall Stock

The Best of Sherlock Holmes: e-World > e-Journals > e-BSJ Copy

How to Copy

the Baker Street Journal CD ROM

to your Hard Disk

Copying Instructions and Tips

These instructions are intended only for you to make a backup/working copy of the electronic BSJ. You should only copy the files from these compact discs if you already own an original of the BSJ CD-ROM set. Please do not steal/pirate this copyrighted material. It is available for sale at the Baker Street Journal website.

It took me about 20 minutes to copy everything using a 500 MHz Pentium III with 128 MB RAM and Windows 98SE.

Some files are duplicated on each CD. While you can copy the complete contents of each CD (thus replacing the duplicate files each time), it will be slightly faster and more efficient to just copy the required files.

1. Check how much free space is available on your hard disk.

Using Windows 98, double-click on My Computer and then right-click on your hard disk. Choose Properties, and the Properties dialog will show you how much free space is available. Note that 1 GB = 1 Gigabyte which is roughly 1000 Megabytes.

You can run into various system problems if your hard disk becomes very full, so I would not recommend copying the e-SHJ to your hard disk if you have less than 3 Gigabytes (3000 Megabytes) of free space and it would be better if you had at least 3.5 Gigabytes of free space.

Assuming you already have Acrobat Reader installed, you will need approximately 2.5 Gigabytes (2500 Megabytes).

The following assumes you have a hard disk named "C:" so substitute your disk's name if it is different.

2. Create a new folder/directory on your hard disk.

This folder will contain all your BSJ files.

Hot Tip: Put this folder in a location that is not subject to backup. You don't want to waste time backing up the BSJ files since you already have them on CD.

Hot Tip: Don't put this folder in My Documents. I often use the "Find Files or Folders" search utility to locate a document that I created. The utility will search through all subfolders. By putting the BSJ files somewhere else, the utility will not waste time searching through these files when I have it search all of "My Documents."

Hot Tip: If you also have the Sherlock Holmes Journal files on your hard disk, don't use the same folder for both the e-SHJ and the BSJ files. It might work, but it is simpler and safer to use separate folders.

I suggest creating the following: C:\xBSJcd

3. Copy the contents of BSJ CD Disc 1 into your new hard disk folder.

Hot Tip: For fastest performance, restart your PC (Start menu > Shut Down > Restart) before starting the copying process.

Hot Tip: Do not run any other programs or try copying from another drive at the same time. You'll get the best performance and have the lowest risk of problems if the only thing your PC is doing is copying files from a single CD drive onto your hard disk.

Don't copy the CD drive letter. Copy the contents of the CD.

I opened one window showing the contents of C:\xBSJcd (empty). I opened a second window showing the contents of my CD (lots of files with names like 001-vo~1.pdf and a folder named "Index"). I then selected all the contents of the CD (Edit > Select-All or Ctrl-A). I then did a copy/paste into the hard disk folder C:\xBSJcd (I actually used a right-click, drag to the window, and selected Copy Here).

Hot Tip: After copying everything from Disc 1, you can save some hard disk space by deleting two files. These are the installers for the Windows and Mac Acrobat Reader application. The files are named ACRD4ENU.EXE and AR405ENG.BIN (the EXE and BIN suffixes may not be visible depending on your Windows settings). They use about 11 MB of disk space and you don't need them.

4. Copy the contents of the other three BSJ CD Discs (#2-4) into your new hard disk folder.

These discs contain duplicates of some files from Disc 1, including the "Index" folder and all of its subfolders and files. You can just select-all and copy, but that will waste a little time replacing files with previously copied ones from Disc 1. It is, however, the simplest approach.

Advanced User Tip: If you are comfortable with file types, suffixes, and selecting ranges of files, you only need to copy the ".PDF" files from discs #2-4. You do not need the file "00000-~1.pdf" which is on all 4 discs (thus already copied from Disc 1.) You don't need to re-copy the Index folder or the Index files.

5. Clean up.

Hot Tip: After such extensive copying, it's a good idea to re-initialize Windows. Eject and remove your last BSJ CD. Now restart your PC (Start menu/ Shut Down/ Restart). This will clear up any memory leak effects.

6. The results.

You will have the following in your new BSJ folder on your hard disk:

- The overall Table of Contents file (00000-~1.pdf)

- The Introduction to the collection (0000-i~1.pdf)

- Cumulative Index for 1970-1993 (000-cu~1.pdf)

- Cumulative Index for 1946-1969 (000-in~1.pdf)

- Subject Index for 1970-1974 (000-in~2.pdf)

- The BSJ issues in PDF files from "001-vo~1.pdf" to "221-xm~1.pdf"

- An Index folder (with many sub-items), and top-level files "Index.log" and "Index.pdx"

If you do a Select All, right-click, Properties:

248 files, 10 folders, 2.34GB

Note 1: This assumes you deleted the two Installer files noted above in step 2.

Note 2: Actual hard disk space used may vary slightly depending on the overall size of your hard disk.

7. Check if the correct Search Index is selected

Acrobat uses a catalog Search Index as part of its Search / Query capability. To use Search / Query with the BSJ on your hard disk, you need to make sure that the software is set to use the index file on your hard disk and that no other index files (e.g., for the e-SHJ) are currently selected.

The first time you use the BSJ files on your hard disk, do the following:

- Open any issue of the BSJ using Adobe Acrobat Reader

- Choose Edit > Search > Select Indexes

- Click and select the grayed-out index "The Baker Street Irregulars" (if present)

- Then click the Remove button (this gets rid of the pointer to the old CD-based index file)

- Click the Add button

- Navigate to the hard disk folder where you have the BSJ files (e.g., C:\xBSJcd)

- Select the "Index.pdx" file (not the Index folder) and click Open

- The index listing for "The Baker Street Irregulars" now appears in black and is checked

- Click the OK button to save this new index setting

Thereafter when you use the BSJ on your hard disk, it's often simplest to have only a single index active at one time when doing searches. Having these other indexes active and available is usually not useful when doing searches focused on the BSJ. To check which index is active:

- Choose Edit > Search > Select Indexes

- Be sure that the Baker Street Irregulars index is checked, and that none of the other checkboxes are checked

- Click the OK button to save this new index setting

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