I have a question about hard drive copying

[Al Garncarz]

:confused: need an answer to hard drive dubbing...

Can anyone tell me an easy way to totally copy a hard
drive, I have one hard drive in C directory and then have
another that are D and E, they are one drive partioned
into two, but I would like to move everything from C to
my E drive so I can remove the C drive and reformat it
because for some reason it is a 20 gig hard drive and it
is only reading 2 gig. I wrote the company Maxtor and they
said to reformat the drive. But as you might of expected I
have already got C running with windows 98 and IE 5.5 plus
all my wifes Yahoo gaming stuff, so if I could find a way to copy
the whole C drive to E then while I was working on C my wife
could still run the computer with E while I get things done.
There has to be someone out there who has a wife that when
it's time to play her games at Yahoo, then everything better run right, LOL... But really can someone help with the tranfer from C to E without getting one of them expensive dubbers. Any
replies will be great. Also if you would rather e-mail me, fastone111@new.rr.com
Thanks, :burn: :burn:

[thefly]

Norton ghost will copy partitions to partitions. But You better read the manual so you don't nuke the wrong partition.

[Teacher_Doug]

You couuld try the old DOS command xcopy. There is a switch you can use to copy directories and sub-directories as well. DO you want to use your E drive as the boot drive?

[Al Garncarz]

Originally posted by drobb2
You couuld try the old DOS command xcopy. There is a switch you can use to copy directories and sub-directories as well. DO you want to use your E drive as the boot drive?




:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Yes, I want the E drive as my boot drive cause the D drive is only
partioned to 400mb, and D and E are the same drive. I'll take a
try at xcopy, never gave dos a thought, well I'll get back with ya
in a few days telling you if it worked, and thanks to the others that replied. Al

[nodoze]

AL - Using XCOPY probably will not work! There are certain files that XCOPY can't copy properly & I think that when you tried to boot from your 'E' drive, the system wouldn't come up.

Also, In order for this type of thing to work you will have to change the way your drives are partitioned. The new 'E' drive must be a Primary partition, not a logical drive in an extended partition & also must be set as the 'Active' partition. The drive itself should also be the MASTER on the PRIMARY IDE channel, not a slave.

As you can tell this is getting complicated & I hope you see this before you re-format.

The type of thing you are trying to do would be a heck of alot easier if you used programs like Norton's Ghost to duplicate the drive & Partition Magic to change your partion settings.

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by thefly
Norton ghost will copy partitions to partitions. But You better read the manual so you don't nuke the wrong partition.

Norton Ghost is Wally's new favorite application. My advice: get yourself a copy. Mine came bundled with my Epox 8KHA+, but Soyo main boards also tend to have it bundled as well.

[thefly]

Hi Wally, I agree! Ghost is a lovely program! :)

The enterprise version is simply awsome as well.

Great for rolling out new machines.

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by thefly
Hi Wally, I agree! Ghost is a lovely program! :)

The enterprise version is simply awsome as well.

Great for rolling out new machines.

My parent's hard drive recently took a crap, one of my friends hard drive is starting to take a crap, and my sister's hard drive is taking a crap as we speak. So I replaced my parent's hard drive, and reinstalled everying, then REMEMBERED I OWN A COPY OF GHOST!! That's going to make my life sooooo much easier!

[robjustice]

Wa11y-one of the harddrives is crashing at work. (You have to boot the computer 10,15,20 times to get past the invalid system disk) I told everyone to leave the computer on, until I can repair it. I have a copy of Nortons Ghost, will it back everything up? There are programs that I would hate to lose on that computer. We use it for everything from connecting to Volvo, Cat, GMC to writing quotes. Will it copy everything? Proxy setting for Volvo, and the Cat program?

[thefly]

ya. it will clone the partition or the disk completely. Even your damaged files as well. So your new drive might suffer from the same issue, as it is a 100% clone of the sick disk.

[cjlax5]

hey, Al Garncarz, just so you know, when you are typing messages you dont have to hit enter at the end of each line.

Good luck with ur hard drive

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by robjustice
Wa11y-one of the harddrives is crashing at work. (You have to boot the computer 10,15,20 times to get past the invalid system disk) I told everyone to leave the computer on, until I can repair it. I have a copy of Nortons Ghost, will it back everything up? There are programs that I would hate to lose on that computer. We use it for everything from connecting to Volvo, Cat, GMC to writing quotes. Will it copy everything? Proxy setting for Volvo, and the Cat program?

The Fly got it right on the nose. You can do an exact copy over, but I believe it'll copy damaged files. So if it's just a problem with the drive itself, and none of the files, it should work for you.

[Al Garncarz]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by nodoze
[B]AL - Using XCOPY probably will not work! There are certain files that XCOPY can't copy properly & I think that when you tried to boot from your 'E' drive, the system wouldn't come up.

Also, In order for this type of thing to work you will have to change the way your drives are partitioned. The new 'E' drive must be a Primary partition, not a logical drive in an extended partition & also must be set as the 'Active' partition. The drive itself should also be the MASTER on the PRIMARY IDE channel, not a slave.

As you can tell this is getting complicated & I hope you see this before you re-format.

The type of thing you are trying to do would be a heck of alot easier if you used programs like Norton's Ghost to duplicate the drive & Partition Magic to change your partion settings.



:mad: :( :mad: That's not the news I really wanted to hear!!

:D But NODOZE that has nothing to do with you, I'm glad you told me that stuff upfront. This Norton's Ghost, is it expensive??:eh?:
I'm planning on buying a new computer but I still want to get this computer back in service cause it was a great computer for my broadband internet service and all around. Well I guess I'll take a look at how much that program cost, otherwise I'll just totally erase the drive and do little here little there till I have it back. Thanks to all again...

[mahniex]

Norton ghost is a great program but I don't think it works with the NTFS of Windows XP. It can only copy to or from FAT 32 as far as I know. In that case you may have to use something like Drive Image.

[Hardass]

Originally posted by Al Garncarz
:confused: need an answer to hard drive dubbing...

Can anyone tell me an easy way to totally copy a hard
drive, I have one hard drive in C directory and then have
another that are D and E, they are one drive partioned
into two, but I would like to move everything from C to
my E drive so I can remove the C drive and reformat it
because for some reason it is a 20 gig hard drive and it
is only reading 2 gig. I wrote the company Maxtor and they
said to reformat the drive. But as you might of expected I
have already got C running with windows 98 and IE 5.5 plus
all my wifes Yahoo gaming stuff, so if I could find a way to copy
the whole C drive to E then while I was working on C my wife
could still run the computer with E while I get things done.
There has to be someone out there who has a wife that when
it's time to play her games at Yahoo, then everything better run right, LOL... But really can someone help with the tranfer from C to E without getting one of them expensive dubbers. Any
replies will be great. Also if you would rather e-mail me, fastone111@new.rr.com
Thanks, :burn: :burn:
Check out partition magic it combines partitions.