Task: create a copy of hd C on blank hd D

Stealth1024

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2000
2,266
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I have two hard drives and I would like to simply copy all of the contents on drive C onto a new drive D, however simply performing a mass copy within Windows yields file sharing violations.

I booted from a startup disk and tried the xcopy C: D: command, but of course it didn't recurse into each subdirectory.

Does anyone know what the switch is to accomplish this, or another method of performing this task?

Thank you.
 

jungleman

Junior Member
Sep 4, 2000
7
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I think the switch is xcopy c: d: /s, but you don't really want to do that. It isn't going to preserve long filenames and you will be really pissed when your mp3's names are cut off. Norton Ghost is a popular program to do this, but there are free ones you can get from Western Digitals homepage (ez drive installation software i think) and from Maxtor's homepage (maxblast). Both of these are free and work well even if they aren't as fast as Ghost.
 

eelw

Lifer
Dec 4, 1999
10,339
5,492
136
I typically just xcopy while in Windows. Usually only has sharing violation with swapfile. The image works fine for me (done this on over 2 dozen systems - only with Win9x, yet to try with WIN2K.) Try going into safe mode and kill all programs except explorer.exe. It should work under normal Windows mode though. Last resort, take both HDs to an another system and perform an xcopy.
 

dave8311

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
415
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I use the freeware version of Norton Ghost.

I use a removable D: drive, mounted in one of those tray things.

When I want to make a copy, I slide the D: drive into the slot, boot with the Ghost disk, and copy C: to D:

After the copy is done, I remove the D: drive, and reboot normaly.

I found that if I leave the D: drive connected, the page file leaves C: drive and moves to D: drive. This won't work for my backup needs, so that's why I use the removable drive.

The drives are both ATA/100 7200rpm 40GB Maxtors.

It takes about 1 minute per Gig.

In case it makes a difference, C: drive is NTFS

Good Luck :)