Copy a hard drive over to another

[blackhawk]

Can I not just use dos to do a full hard drive, os & all, copy to another drive I install on the secondary ide channel? It seems easier than using ghost which I have but isn't on the system I want to do this to.

 

[Spiff]

short answer... no.

Some files must be in certain locations on the hard drive. normal copying does not accomplish this. In addition, if this is a bootable drive, you would lose all your bot sector info as copy does not copy these things. What you are trying to do is image a drive... so bit-by-bit copy software is required. Ghost, Drive Image Pro, and others are there to accomplish this.

 

[blackhawk]

Thanks for the quick and good explanation. I guess I'll experiment with ghost before I do the real thing.

 

[check72]

Actually, I have done it in DOS, but Ghost is ALOT faster.

I transfered a 2.5gb Windows drive (OS and all) to a 10.2gb drive in DOS, without losing anything. You need to use certain switches, but I don't remember what they are. I did a web search to find the info, so maybe try that.

Look here

Or here

I recommend Ghost though.

 

[RobSan]

Actually, you can use a great little free utility called FILECOPY which will do it all for you. You can pick it up at Russ's BBS and it's a very small download. Works in a DOS window and is very fast, especially for free.

Rob

 

[LasombraB]

You Can Do It In A Dos Prompt From Inside Windows. Use XCOPY32 Command With The Following Switches. /H /I /C /K /Y /E /S Example XCOPY32 C:\*.* D:\*.* /H /I /C /K /Y /E /S. Assuming That You Have Already Paritioned The 2nd Drive As D:. This Will Copy All The Files Including Hiden Files And Keep Their Rights. You Must Make Sure No Other Program Is Running In The Background, IE Anti-Virus Software. Hope This Helps.