Windows 95 Disk Cloning Procedure It Needn't Be a Difficult Affair Richard Guidry
Cloning Hard Drives in Windows 95 is often a pain if not approached in the correct way. What follows is two tried and tested ways of achieving a disk clone under '95. Note A basic assumption made in this feature article is that the original C: drive is being replaced with another drive of equal or larger size.
Method One
Make sure to have available the Windows 95 Startup diskette before proceeding. It will be needed at step 9.
Configure new drive as a slave to the existing master (or original) hard drive. This may require jumper changes on the original hard drive to accommodate the existence of a slave.
At the end of the POST sequence, enter Setup to check the CMOS parameters for the slave drive and make any corrections needed (auto, user config, etc.). Save Changes.
Boot system. When '95 is all the way up, click on Start-Programs, then find and open an MS-DOS Prompt.
At the DOS prompt, type FDISK. If the new drive is correctly configured as a slave, then 5 menu options should be present. Select item 5, then select disk 2. At the next menu, the default can be taken by hitting the Enter key to create a DOS partition. All the remaining questions can be answered simply by pressing the Enter key. When the FDISK main menu reappears, press the ESC key to return to a DOS prompt.
At the DOS prompt, type FORMAT D: /U, Do not add the /S switch at this point, even if this will be the new C Drive. If you do, certain files will be copied to the hard drive which WILL disrupt the successful operation of the next step. Label the hard drive when prompted, if desired.
When the format operation is complete, open the Windows Explorer. Create a new folder on Drive D and name it Windows. Go to View-Options, and select Show all file types (or View-Folder Options-Hidden files-Show all files if using Internet Explorer 4.0) Select the "Windows" folder on drive C: and select all files & folders except for the swap file WIN386.SWP (this file will automatically be re-created later). Drag & copy (do not move) the selected files & folders on to the newly created folder on drive D: and select "Yes to all" at prompts. Select the root directory on drive C: and select all files & folders except for the Windows folder. Drag & copy the selected files & folders on to root drive of drive D: and again select "Yes to all" at prompts.
Click on START, SHUTDOWN, YES. When the screen indicates it is OK to power off, do so.
Put the Windows 95 Startup diskette into the boot diskette drive.
Remove the original hard drive and set the jumpers on the new drive as the master, or only drive present, setting.
Power on the system. If you replaced the original drive with a larger drive, it would be a good idea to check the CMOS parameters for the drive(s) setting(s) as you did in step 3.
When the "startup" diskette has booted and you see the A: prompt, type FDISK. Select item 2 from the menu to make the partition active that was setup in step 5. (it could not be done then as two active partitions can't exist at the same time). After the partition has been made active, ESC from the fdisk program.
For safe measure, now type SYS C: When complete, you should see System transferred, then an A: prompt.
Remove the diskette, and re-boot the system. The new C Drive should now boot. The directory and file structure should be an exact match of the original.
Method Two
Disconnect drive C temporarily, connect new drive as master. FDISK, and create the desired partitions. Make Partition One active.
Reconnect old C to master on Primary, and the new drive as drive D (master on secondary or slave on primary)
Start the computer, and when Windows has started, click Start-Run and type XCOPY32.EXE /c /h /e /k C:*.* D: without the quotes, and click OK.
Make sure to switch to a window, and not to full screen. This will copy all files from drive C to drive D, including read only, hidden and system files, as well as keep long file names intact. When it's done, it will close the window, and you can then shutdown and set the new drive to drive C.
