John Galea's Windows 95 Hard Drive Copy Procedure Page
Introduction
I have had a machine that is dual booted with Windows 95 and OS/2
and periodically have needed to change to a different drive (upgrading for eg).
The following procedure will walk you through the process of copying the
contents of the drive(s) and having all work when your done. If you are
not dual booted, this process can also be used to copy an OS/2 only or Windows 95
only as well. There are always more than one way of doing anything, so
don't be surprised if you might do it differently. Also, don't be surprised
if your method doesn't work. Not that your not smarter than me but ...
This procedure will assume that your old drive is C and is the one you
are currently booting from, D is the new drive, and you have fdisk and
formatted the new drive with the copy the system files option under Windows 95.
Remove virtual memory
Windows keeps a virtual memory file open (similar to OS/2's swapper.dat).
This file is always open when Windows is up, so you need to boot up Windows
with Virtual memory off. To do this My computer, Control panel, System,
Performance tab, Virtual memory box, disable virtual memory. Of course
you will need enough memory to accommodate this. Now reboot your system.
Don't forget to turn this back on when your done.
If you don't do this step Windows will quit in the middle of the copy
when it can't get at the swapper file.
Windows 95 Copy
Open the contents of the C drive, from My computer.
Select View, Options, View tab, Show all files, Apply.
Select Edit, Select all, then Edit, Copy.
Now open the contents of the D drive from My computer.
Select Edit, Paste. This will copy all files from the old C to the
new D and take care of the Win95 Registry and all long file names.
The only I haven't figured out is how to get Win95 to do a verify
of the copy that has taken place. Such as the old Verify On from DOS.
You must do the Win95 copy first!
Optional Check out previous Step
If you want to check if you've been successful, remove the C from the current
chain and attempt to boot from the new drive. If all goes well your Ok and done
from the Win95 point of view.
It is possible that you may need to replace the system files on the new boot
disk. This may be needed especially if you didn't format the drive with the
copy the system files. To do this boot to a Windows 95 boot disk,and execute:
\windows\system\sys c:
Change the current drive back to OS/2
Change the current drive back to OS/2 by executing
\os2\boot /os2
Then as the system is rebooting, but before OS/2 starts insert the floppies
mentioned below.
Copy the OS/2 files
Boot OS/2 from floppy (using the original install disks, and then select
command prompt).
Copy all of the files from your existing C to your new D by:
c:\os2\xcopy c:\*.* d:\ /h /o /t /s /e /r /v
While this is copying the same files again, it takes care of the extended
attributes of the files.
You must do this with the system booted from the floppy so that OS/2
does not have any files locked.
Ready to checkout OS/2
Once again remove the old C drive from the chain
so you can try to boot to the new drive.
If the drive is not bootable then you will need to boot back to diskette, find
the installation disk that has SYSINSTX on it and execute
a:sysinstx c:
As the French say Le Voila!
Another HD copy page
Ghost Software
All this said I recently discovered a piece of code called Ghost. It will allow you to copy entire hard drives as long
as the new hard drive is larger or of the same size. Ghost will handle copying all of the partitions, correctly manages
Win95 VFAT, OS/2 HPFS, Dos FAT, and WinNT NTFS. It is amazingly fast. Currently Ghost are allowing you to
download a demo version of the code. It is fully functional for 30 days, and works very well! Check it out.
Ghost Software
Partition Magic
No hard drive discussion would be complete without mention of Partition Magic. This is one of THE most
revolutionary programs I have seen. This program will allow you to increase and decrease partition sizes. It
can save an amazing amount of time. I love this program!
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