HDD duplication

[Livewire]

Does anyone know of a freeware program to make an exact replica of the contents of your HDD in order to upgrade to a larger drive without having to reinstall Windoz
Thx,
--Livewire--

[Axel]

Not free-ware, but there is disk-imaging software out there. All in all, unless you are doing the EXACT same hardware, imaging is a bad idea - you won't like the results.

Best to just slave the disk and start re-installing & copying as needed. You'll probably find you don't want 1/3rd of what's on the old drive anyway.

You'll have to set up the new drive anyway with it's own drivers and possibly over-lays depending on the OS and BIOS.

Any reason you can't slave the new drive and keep the old drive intact? Install the games which require speed on the new drive and move over the saved game files as needed.

[Target]

I think that imaging is a great idea, and a wonderful time saver. Its not nearly as hard as you might think, and I've not had any issues doing so with several drives and multiple imaging packages.

If you are buying a new drive, chances are it will come with the utility to do just what you are looking for (Maxtor and Western Digital drives do anyway). If yours happens to not come with the diskette, email me and I will get the utils to you as they should have been provided by the mgf.

Setup the drives maunally (ie: fdisk and partitions, etc.), and then boot to the diskette that comes with the new hard-disk, and choose the option to transfer the contents of one drive to the other. Would recommend not installing EZ-bios or its equivelant as I don't care for it, but it works if you choose to use it.

[drdeath]

or, you can use the following command in the RUN box in win 95/98:

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

and just replace (if necessary) the c:\ and d: with the drive letters you are using...

[Livewire]

Xcopy! I knew there was a DOS command for that just needed a little hint. Thanks for the replies /forum/smile.gif --Livewire--

[DUSTYRUN]

See if a friend has drive copy and it could be a snap.

[drdeath]

if you use xcopy, tho, be sure to use all those tags on the end of it, or not all the folders/files/stuff will get copied exactly right, and you will end up with a bunch of half working programs and probably a not-at-all working windoze....