Software that copies a harddrive

[Plaster]

MadMax is right. Try Symantec's Ghost. Works great.

[Gentle Giant]

Both MadMax & fishboy are right - have used both with no problems.
If you bought a WD HD it comes with a WD Utilitiy that does that as well.

[MrEd]

A Long Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away... I used to use this nifty thing called "Lap Link". It's pretty useful, although I havn't had the opportunity to use it in the last few years. http://www.screenshot.com/KeyScreen%28s%294/laplink.htm You can take a peek at it here.

Good luck!

[Mbarb]

Most new drives come with software to make a image of the old drive on the new one. I have also used ghost and it works well.

[CMonster]

Great advice there,

...also if you are just copying a windows partition a very small program called "file copy" will do a nice job of creating a new clone drive.

it's free and you can get it here: http://www.seagate.com/disc/discwizard/discwiz_utilities.shtml

[BBA]

Ive done it thru windows also, just fdisk the drive and slave it to the booting drive and copy everything but the swap file over from windows explorer.

Using ghost is a good fast way to do it from dos, but the image has to be stored somewhere not on the drive being copied or being copied to. A 2G drive usually makes a .gho image of about 120-160M, so a bigger drive, well you do the math. In short, if you ave a bootable Zip drive or can burn the image to a cd then ghost is great, if not then you need a 3rd drive to use it like this.

BBA

[Ed_S]

Have used Quarterdeck's DiskClone with great success. Works from boot disk at dos level, nothing is installed. Very simple to use & works great.

[Swat5444]

Anyone know of a program that will copy everything on one harddrive to another and basically clone that harddrive? thanks

[kwai]

do all of these utils that create an image, make an image smaller in size than the target partition?

[MadMax]

Ghost

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/fs_ghost.html

[fishboy]

Drive Copy from Powerquest will copy one drive to another as well. It does involve changing the jumpers to Master\Slave on the respective drives

[LJE2]

Partition and format your new drive with system files, then install your new drive jumpered as a slave, start Windows 95 or 98, from the desktop right click on "My Computer"
then click on properties, then click on "performance" then on "virtual memory". Click on "Let me specify my own system memory setting" and disable virtual memory. Restart Windows 95 or 98. Once restarted on the Taskbar click on Start, Run and type:
xcopy c:\*.*/e /h /k /r /c d: and click OK(In this statement C: is the master and D: is the slave or new drive change accordingly if your drives are lettered differently). this command copies all you files to the new drive. Once this is completed shut down your computer change the jumpers on the new drive, reboot, and change hard disk settings in the BIOS, once Windows has loaded go back to "my computer" properties, virtual memory and click on "Let Windows specify my own system memory settings". This comes from Western Digital Corporation (Service/Support)- Tip of the Month, March 1997. It was for Windows 95 but it will also work in Windows 98

[This message has been edited by LJE2 (edited 06-05-99).]

[This message has been edited by LJE2 (edited 06-05-99).]

[reckless]

I've used Ghost to do hundreds of drive copies in a College environment. It works great and is simple to use.

[BBA]

LJE2

I read your post, why do you use XCOPY instead of XCOPY32? Doesn't XCOPY remove long file name associations?

BBA

[Ed_S]

DiskClone does not require you to format or partition first. In fact, it's a waste of time since the program will do it again, anyway. Just hook up both drives, boot system with DiskClone floppy, program will start and prompt you for source & target (watch it, the default is Source=slave, Target=master) Will then prompt you for partition sizes if target is larger or source has multiple partitions. That's it.

Have even used to clone a friend's drive for him - in my machine w/o ever booting to his HD, which would screw up his registry. Worked good. Had a !@#$% Packard Bell P60 to upgrade HD in, would not recognize more than 2 IDE's so needed to clone it outside it's box, (w/o disturbing any settings) that's when I found this.

[LJE2]

BBA
I have never used xcopy32, I am not familiar with that command, I have used the command stated in my post with long file names many times and they copy same as original

[BBA]

Its easy, just type "XCOPY32" any time you would type "XCOPY"

It's the 32 bit of the same, works faster. I thought LFN's needed 32 bit exe's to copy correctly, guess not.

BBA

[LJE2]

I'll have to try that next time I use xcopy,I would immagine in should work in place of the command I posted above, thanks for the info BBA

[Lastus]

This confusion regarding xcopy and xcopy32 has come up on other forums, the confusion comes from the DOS vs. the win9X versions of the program. I saved this note from an previous discussion on just this topic:

"Raymond Chen (raymondc@microsoft.com), the author of xcopy32 and the Win95 version of xcopy, has posted about his program in the comp.os.ms-windows.apps.utilities.win95 newsgroup. The following (from several of Raymond's posts) is quoted:

Start quote >>>>>>>

Don't run xcopy32 directly. Ever. Always run xcopy. Xcopy.exe...sets up a few things and then runs Xcopy32 with the appropriate settings...

If you are running in Windows mode, xcopy runs the 32-bit version of xcopy32.exe. If you are running in DOS mode, xcopy runs the 16-bit version of xcopy32.exe. (Yes, xcopy32.exe is two, two, two programs
in one.) If you look carefully, xcopy.exe is a tiny little program. Xcopy is just a little front-end for xcopy32, which is where all the real work happens... It was a mistake to give that other file the
name "xcopy32.exe". I should've called it "xcopy.mod"...
Xcopy.exe is the only program you should run.

I was given five days to add LFN support to Xcopy...I did what I could in the time I had...it was easier to add the /h option to the Win95 version than the DOS version. (The DOS version is written in assembly language. The Win95 version is written in C.)....I had some time left over, so I added /H and /K and /L and a few other switches to the 32-bit version.

If you are running in DOS mode, then only the DOS xcopy features are available. Xcopy handles everything, *provided* you run it from within the Windows 95 GUI. The /H and /K options are supported only in Windows 95 mode.

<<<<<end quote.

Regards



[This message has been edited by Lastus (edited 06-07-99).]

[Lastus]

[This message has been edited by Lastus (edited 06-07-99).]

[CMonster]

lastus,

Okay, thanks for the information...that makes sense. I have used xcopy "c:\*.* /e/h/k/r/c d:" in the past with good success, but there were a few times it gave me trouble. Now I use "file copy" and find it easier and it copies the system files as well. It should be noted these methods are good for DOS/Windows partitions only.

If you have another operating system, such as BeOS (which I am using to post this) then you would need another program.

I have heard that "Disk Clone" and "Drive Copy" can clone multiple partitions and operating systems, does anyone know if this is true? Can Ghost do this?

George

[Roy]

George - Drive Copy handles multiple partitions in the following manner. The target drive must be larger than the source drive. Drive Copy creates partitions that are proportionately larger.

It works just fine, but offers no options for making more or fewer partitions, or for changing their proportionate relationship.

[LJE2]

Lastus
Thanks for the information, Cmonster, when you say you use "file copy" could you be more specific, to copy one drive to another would you setup the same as with "xcopy" without adding system files to the format command, and then just substitute "file copy" for "xcopy" in the "xcopy c:\*.*/e/h/k/r/c d:"

Cmonster, I just read your post up a little close to the begining, Nevverrmind, thanks anyway

[This message has been edited by LJE2 (edited 06-07-99).]

[LJE2]

Cmonster
I went to Seagates site via the link you provided, downloaded Diskwizard (the name of the utility that contains "file copy" along with a few others, followed the instructions on their page, and evey time I tried to uncompress to a floppy I would get an error, that said "Disk write error", I went back to their site to see if there was something on this problem and read "More about DiskWizard", It says it does not work with SCSI drives, only with IDE, (my hard drives are SCSI), so even if I could have gotten it to unzip, it wouldn't work on my drives, Just thought I'd let you know it's for IDE only, Thanks

[BBA]

Ok, I guess I was wrong, but tell me, if xcopy32 is not on the path disk, why does xcopy work if all it is is a front end for xcopy32?... it obviously can't call on xcopy32, so does it work like the original xcopy?

(Boy how confusing can one be...)

BBA


[This message has been edited by BBA (edited 06-07-99).]

[LJE2]

Here's what I got out of reading the quote of Raymond Chen, from Lastus's post. Mr Chen wrote the program, (xcopy32.exe) to respond to the command of, xcopy, by running the program xcopy32.exe, which in Winmode runs the 32 bit version of xcopy32.exe and in DOS mode runs the 16 bit version of xcopy32.exe, so by typing xcopy from "Run" you will run the 32 bit version that has LFN support, all I know is I have used this in the past and it has worked, but from reading some of the other posts it looks like there are easier ways.

[fishboy]

has anyone noticed that we all responded to swat5444 and he has not replied at all?!!!

[David]

I am not familiar with this. As I understand it, after you clone to another drive, the could be larger or smaller, you can remove your original master drive and change your slave drive to master and it will boot straight from the new drive as if nothing got changed. Thanks

[LJE2]

fishboy
Ya, now that you mention it.

David
yes, you understand correctly, buy some of the software mentioned above will not copy from a larger drive to a smaller one, I'm not familliar with most of it, but I've been told that "Drive Copy" does not allow you to copy to a smaller disk

[gary reavis]

I've another variation on 'xcopy'. i've used it 50-100 times, no problem.
C:=old drive(master)
D:= new drive(slave)(FDisked, partioned, formatted)

From dos prompt inside Win95/98 type:

xcopy c:\*.* d:\*.* /s/c/h/e/r/k

this will copy all of c: to d: You can continue with similar partitions after.

ex: Old C:, E:, F: New D:, G:, H:
C->D E->G F->H

Once completed, remove old HD, set New drive as Only drive, FDisk to make C: active partition.
Reboot, and up comes Windows 95 or 98.

Obviously commercial programs do this quicker, but this is free with Win95/98

[David]

Gary, will xcopy copy to smaller drive also. Once you remove the master drive and make your clone the master, you boot up using your floppy and command fdisk. When I fdisk, I will find no active partition, then I have to make one active and reboot. If that is right, sound simple. (usually until I try it!)

What if your original hd was partitioned into C and D. I would xcopy my C over to one of the partitions on the new drive?

[This message has been edited by David (edited 06-08-99).]