problems copying partition for new hdd

[jrtroo]

I have successfully installed a 80gb maxtor hdd as a secondary drive, but I want to make it my boot drive. I have to use the Maxblast software to enable the drive because my bios only supports up to 32gb (no updates available). When I attempt to copy my existing partion onto the new drive using maxblast, I have been getting an error that is not letting me get all of the files transferred. Initially the error appeared to always be a game I had installed, so I have uninstalled it and the error continues without a description of what file caused it.

I am thinking that either I can use xcopy from dos or some other program to acomplish this. Any suggestions?

FYI, I am running win98 with 256meg and an existing fujitsu 6gb drive.

Thanks!

 

[altonb1]

Welcome to Windows 9x and later. In the old Dos?Windows days, xcopy would have worked fine. Unfortunately, we now have long file names that will be corrupt if you just boot to a DOS 6.x boot disk and files that will be in use and not copy if you attempt to boot through Windows.

Get a utility called Ghost. Ghost will copy the drive sector by sector to an image file. Once the file is created, you can use ghost to restore the file to the new hard drive. I have never tried this, but I believe you can do a hard disk to hard disk copy, too, if you prefer. Either way, you will boot to a bootable dos disk. (Bootable win 9x disk is fine, too) Run ghost (you can copy ghost.exe to either drive, or just copy it to the floppy. Once you are at an A:> prompt, type ghost (or c:\ghost or wherever the file is located) and the program will load. here you can choose clone disk to disk, disk to image, or image to disk. If you use the image file, use disk to image. Pick the partition you want to copy, give it a filename and create the file on the other hard drive. (You can't restore an image file to the same disk you are reading the image from, nor can you save an image file to the drive you are cloning, and a name such as Cdrive.gho is very clever!) Once the image file has been created, you will need to copy that image file from D: to C:. (You CAN use xcopy for that!)

Once the clones disk AND the image file are on the same drive, shiut down, swap the jumpers so your new drive is primary and the 6GB is slave, and reboot to the dos disk again. Run ghost, but this time restore image file to disk. Pick the new drive as your destination drive, pick the image file from the 6GB drive and let it go. when it's complete, disconnect the D: drive cable and reboot. You should see the same setup you had before, except instead of a 6GB drive you have the new drive. If this did not work, you can fdisk the new drive, swap the jumpers back between the drives, and you're back to where you were when you 1st started.

 

[musixian]

I agree that Ghost is good for this purpose. Let me also recommend you look into Aloha Bob's PC Relocator. It's pretty cheap and it's sole purpose is to do what you're wanting to do. I've heard great reviews about it so far.

 

[jrtroo]

Thanks for the input, this surely saved me a bunch of wasted time trying to use xcopy. I looked up alhoa bob's product and they mention that they do NOT support this operation, yet. Their technical assistance refers users to look to Ghost, DiskCopy, or DriveCopy.

I am even looking at partition magic, but that is probably a bit to advanced for me. Reviews had a lot of people destroying their drives instead of copying them.

 

[Lorne]

Xcopy32 works fine, You can find it in the Windows/Command Folder.
Good Idea is after you make a Boot floppy is to copy Xcopy32 over to it

 

[altonb1]

I can't dispute that xcopy32 will work fine because I have never attempted it. however, do you know if it will copy everything correctly when files are in use? I think Ghost is probably the easiest way to do this, but would like someone else to confirm that xcopy32 would perform the same tasks w/o errors. Can anyone else confirm this?

 

[DaiShan]

if you're worried about files being in use, simply boot in safe mode and run the program.

 

[Double Trouble]

You have two separate issues in play... first, your bios doesn't really properly support your drive, so you have to use the maxblast software. That just adds a new mapping layer to cause more weird problems.

Second, you want to copy your drive to the new one.

Using xcopy is not a good idea, because 1) it won't copy the boot sector etc over, it just copies files. 2) it doesn't proplery deal with long file names unless you run it from within windows, in which case you won't be able to copy all the files anyway.

Your best bet is to try a utility like Ghost, but even then I think you might run into some trouble with the maxblast stuff. First, use the maxblast software to install your new blank hard drive, then use GHost to see if you can copy the old drive onto the new one. You might have to split the new drive up into smaller partitions first though, larger drives can cause issues in win98 as well.