need help copying Hard Drive

[Fingers]

I don't know what is halting the copy, but when I use xcopy to clone a drive, I type;

xcopy32 c:\ /h/i/c/k/e/r/y/ d:

... maybe try that???


Here's an article describing how to use xcopy, as well as a description of the switches http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/idedrv4.html?

[habba]

I'm using xcopy to copy a 1.2 gig HD to a 6.4 HD. The smaller one is the master and the larger is the slave. The slave is formated and partitioned. The copy command is XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r It starts to copy ok, when I pause it with alt+cont+del I see for every file can't find file path, and I get a window which tells me drive is full. Any ideas???

habba

[Fingers]

BTW, which OS are you using?

You can uses fdisk after booting from a bootable floppy (Windows Startup floppy) to check your partition size(s) and status, delete partitions, create new partitions, and set your primary partion "active".

*NOTE Be careful with fdisk though, if you change your partitions on a drive, or even worse, repartition the wrong drive by mistake, you'll loose everything on the drive.

[Nomadic1]

If you don't mind using other software, I have been having excellent results with Norton Ghost on various drives ranging in size from 4 gig to 40 gig. Only thing I don't like about it is that it ignores any partitions on the destination drive and writes it out in one partition at the full disk capacity. Another utility that I have used that worked well was Power Quest's Drive Image. PQ's Drive copy I didn't care for, as it insisted on making the new drive partition the same size as the old, smaller drive (you could then add partitons using fDisk.... but that wasn't what I wanted.).

[habba]

the problem is when I first fdisked the drive I think I did chose the wrong option. For example, I can format the drive in 10 seconds within windows (98 by the way)and try to copy something, anything to the drive as storage and it tells me the drive is full. When I try to fdisk the drive again it tells me wrong parameters on the commands. This is like a little project. I'd rather copy the old drive to know I can do it instaed of reinstalling everything from scratch. Right now my daughter uses the 1.2gig drive as usual with the 6.4 gig as drive D, slave to the C drive. But like I said when you go to copy something to it, it's full. What do ys think of that?

habba

[elroy]

You cannot format a drive in 10 seconds, so something is wrong. Check your partition size and see if it is the correct size. You might remove all the partitions and start over. Fdisk, create partition, reboot, format, reboot. Don't forget to set the partition "active" also To copy a drive you can use any of the installation disks that come with new drives or d/l one from the manufacturers website. Just boot with the installation floppy and go to Advanced Options and select Copy Entire Partition. I've copied many drives like this, it works great and costs nothing.

[jaida]

the pcnineoneone article is very good give that a read over. To copy the drive just use this commmand at the windows dos prompt.

xcopy32 C:\ D:\ /r /i /c /h /k /e /y

[habba]

I tried the previous commands and got the same results. How do I make one partition from scratch on the drive I want to copy to. It also tells me drive is full. I might have made another dos partition on it by accident. I don't remember, I've confused myself.

[habba]

I can't fdisk the drive. I copied the disk using drive2drive. OK. Only problem is now the 6.4 gig that i copied to is a clone of the 1.2 drive I copied from. Ah, live and learn. I've tried typing fdisk c: and d and e for that matter and it telld me incorrect pparameters. I can format C: and sys c: but no fdisk. So how do I repartion the drive. It's practically useless at 1.2gig.

hanging in there

[habba]

Well it's been a learning experience. First of all well, all well that ends well. Thank you for all the replies which were all correct.

[Fingers]

Are you all set then habba?

I'll post very specific details about how to repartition, reformat, and copy the drive if you need it.

[habba]

yes thank you, for some reason or I just didn't know, I couldn't fdisk by typing "fdisk C:". So finally I typed just fdisk after making the blank drive master by itself. It also turns out I had previously made a smaller dos partition without knowing it. Thanks again for asking.

signed,
not so much a rookie anymore

[Fingers]

That's right, NO parameters for fdisk

Glad you got it going...