Copying Hard Drives

[sft42]

Help! I am looking to copy the entire contents of my smallish boot drive onto a shiny new hard drive but it doesn't seem to be working.....I have formatted the new drive ok and tried to copy all the pertanent files but it just won't boot up.....Have I done something wrong during the formatting or is this not possible through windows? Will I need a program like Norton Ghost? Cheers.

[j2buttonsw]

I would use ghost to copy the hard drive. You can copy most data manually but not easily the master boot record which tells your computer where the OS is. Download it from kazaa, create the bootable floppy disk then boot from it and do a disk to disk copy using the small drive as the source.

[Autonomaniac]

You need to have the system files copied to your new hard drive. boot from your old HD then open a DOS window and type FORMAT D: /S (that is if your new HD is the D: if not change it, so it states your correct new HD letter) This will of course wipe your new HD again, but it will be bootable and you can then copy all the files you want to the new drive.

[Phantaxus]

you could of course type sys d: from a dos prompt this would transfer the system without reformatting the drive.

[Phantaxus]

this used to work on Win98 not sure about XP though. having done the sys d: from a dos prompt to make your new drive bootable. format a bootable floppy disk and copy the xcopy command to it its in Windows\command on win98 and windows\system32 on XP boot from the floppy disk and at the dos prompt type xcopy c:\*.* d:\ /s/e/h/k/o this should copy everything from one drive to the other this assumes that your old drive is c and your new one is d. you may have to do a sys d: after it has finished.

[powerless]

[Free Option] I have not used it | http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#free

[sft42]

Thanks for the ideas everyone....after much toing and froing I got Norton to finally work and copy the drive....Had to rerost to DOS commands of all things though!..Cheers again!