xcopy32 instructions

[Carl Price]

I have been reading the thread in Rants and Raves about the xcopy32 instructions I origianlly posted some months ago. These got lost in the second PcMech crash some months ago. Here is a repost. I didn't archive this myself so it may be a bit different from the original in terms of phrasing, but the results will be the same, a cloned harddrive.

First disconnect (and remove if you want) the original harddrive and replace it with the new harddrive jumpered to be the primary harddrive. Set cmos accordingly. (most later motherboards take care of this automatically if you set the drive type to auto.)

Boot from a floppy and set up the new harddrive (fdisk and format. Don't forget to make it active. The reason for removing the original harddrive is that you cannot make two harddrives active in the same computer. You can run them but you can't create them). Do not place a system on the new harddrive. This will be taken care of in the cloning process. Shutdown the computer.

If you have two ide interfaces make the new harddrive the primary on the secondary controller and the original harddrive the primary on the primary controller because the computer must boot from this harddrive. (If you don't have two interfaces make the new drive a slave to the first drive but depending on the age of the first drive this could create some problems. I haven't found anyway to make the newer EIDE drives run as a slave to older non-eide drives). Set cmos accordingly and reboot the system all the way into windows. Choose the Msdos prompt from the start menu. Do not boot to a command prompt and do not shut down to a command prompt. The following procedure must be done in a dos box under Windows to protect any long filenames.

From the dos prompt issue the command "xcopy32 x:\*.* y:\/s/e/r/c/v/h/k/y" (where X is the original harddrive and Y the new harddrive) and hit enter. All switches are needed as they make the xcopy32 command do certain things. (if you want to know what the switches do issue the command "xcopy32 /?" at the prompt for a list.) The cloning process will now start and depending on the amount of data to be transferred will take some time to complete.

Next, issue the command "sys d:" from the same dos prompt. This command is redundant and is mostly not needed but I have had cases where it was necessary.

Exit windows and cut off the computer. Remove the original drive and reconnect the new drive as primary on the primary controller. If you want to retain the original drive put it anywhere on the ide bus (jumpered accordingly of course).

This procedure will clone your harddrive exactly (you will still have references to c drive in your icons for example) and do it with the tools that Windows provides.

Carl


[This message has been edited by Carl Price (edited 01-20-2000).]