[mcornbill]

Hi all

I want to copy my c: drive to another hdd as I have ran out of room. I don't want all the hassle of re-installing the o/s and all my other apps so is their a way I can do this in DOS?

How do I get DOS to recognise my 2 hdd's so that I can use the copy *.* function.

Cheers
Mark

 

[johnwill]

You can't use the copy function, however if you check with Maxtor or WD websites, they supply an imaging utility that'll copy a full hard disk to a new one.

 

[BTS'76]

Norton Ghost, does a good job of copying

 

[brett001]

Powerquest Drive Image does a good job too.

 

[mcornbill]

Cheers guys

Have got Norton Ghost am will be trying it tonight. It said the c: drive needed defragging first after trying it last night.

Mark

 

[johnwill]

Before you run any imaging software, you should for sure run CHKDSK or SCANDISK, depending on which O/S you have. Defragging is a good idea, though it's normally not necessary.

 

[mcornbill]

Still can't get ghost to work. It just says:

"Unable to defragment the Virtual Partition File. This is probably due to your disk being too fragmented. Run defrag........."

Shall try powerquest drive.

 

[mcornbill]

Sod!

Will nothing work. Now when I run Powerquest Drive it says "Cannot prepare machine for reboot. Exit code 17. You must run it from floppy."

So I run it from floppy and it says something like disk manager or drive manager has been found on Drive 0 but is not running?

Can anyone help me cos this is really driving me mad!!!

Mark

 

[johnwill]

Now it all becomes clear! You partitioned the drive with a 3rd party drive overlay when it was originally installed! I'm afraid to say, I don't have any good ideas on making an image. Did you try the Maxtor or Western Digital utilities? I know that Maxtor deals with the drive overlay in their software...

 

[mcornbill]

Hi Johnwill

No I didn't I haven't touched this drive since I got my pc. I did however partition my other hard drive which is a 60gb one with some dynamic drive overlay software because my old BIOS didn't support that large size of drive. Do you think this is what is affecting it?

Also I have a new mobo now and BIOS that does support a 60gb drive so would I be safe in removing this DDO or will it mess up the drive?

Mark

 

[johnwill]

If you copy from the first drive to the second, you're running afoul of the drive overlay, I think that's the basic issue.

Removing the drive overlay will obviously also remove the data on the drive, so you'll need a backup. Of course, you should have a backup of your data anyway! FWIW, I avoid drive overlay software like the plague, it only complicates the process of using hard disks.

IMO, I'd figure out how to get rid of the drive overlay and then attempt the copy. I really don't know why GHOST *****es about fragmentation, I've never seen that message. I cruised over to Symantec and here's what they say about that message:

Unable to defrag...

If you're using GHOST 7003, you might try making a boot floppy and running the copy that way after you get rid of the drive overlay.

 

[mcornbill]

Cheers JohnWill but I'm in a whole world of pain now: http://www.techsupportforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4585

I should've left it man I can't believe it!

 

[johnwill]

Have you considered a new computer?