Hard drive problem

[Booldawg]

i think my hard drive has destroyed itself from the boot sector - it wont get past the POST sequence. My setting settings recognise the drive so I dont think theres an IDE problem on the motherboard.

I am able to boot off a floppy and get to a DOS prompt and would like to copy the entire contents of my old hard drive onto a partition on the new one. When I use the command Copy C:\ D:\ it only copys the files at top level - none of the folders. What command should I use to copy the entire C drive to my new HDD? and will this actually work (as I dont really want to install all my software and drivers from CDs)

[Booldawg]

Doh! I meant BIOS settings not setting settings!

[BillyNoMates]

Have you checked the hard drive manufacturer site ? They often have drive specific utilities to do a low level copy and these can be fitted on a floppy.

[OBonio]

xcopy c:\ d:\ /S /E /H /C

will copy from c: to d: recursively all files (including hidden and system), continuing if there are errors (instead of stopping, which is really annoying!).

[OBonio]

Thinking about it, this won't boot unless you've installed XP on D: already. The MBR will be missing.

Look here to install it :

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/re skit/c28621675.mspx#EJ5AE

[Booldawg]

many thanks all