Howdy All, Just wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on software to copy a hard drive. My brother's been using my computer running good ol Win 98. However, the OS and other programs are all on his 40 gig hard drive. My hard drive which is still in the computer is blank. I need to duplicate all of the data on his drive to mine so I can get my computer back and have the original OS and settings intact. I'm gonna do some googling for programs a bit later, but due to work I don't have the time right now. I figured with all the knowledgeable people in this forum, someone might be able to steer me in a good direction. Muchos Gracias
ok maby i misunderstood your problem, your brother was using his hard drive in your computer, and now he is going to take it out and you need to copy the data? If this is the case, i dont think any special software is needed, you can copy his entire drive(just use right click copy) and past that in your hard drive, but i think there is one file in the main directory that you need to change, not sure for win98 but i will look it up. EDIT2: yea i think windows 98 uses the boot.ini in the main directory of the hard drive, check to see if you have the file X:\boot.ini, X being your brothers hard drive letter, if you do have it, then post the contents in a reply.
Copy & Paste works as long as the TWO drives are installed on the same machine. As for Backing up to CD or DVD disks, Nero 6.3 has that ability. In case anything goes wrong, it's JUST like a system recovery CD that some computer manufactures include with a new system.
The thing is I've already to copy & paste, but it had problems copying my windows directory & sub-directories. I believe it was because some of the windows files i needed to copy were in use at the time. Comments much appreciated edit: I'm pretty sure it wasn't the boot.ini. It started having problems when it hit the win sub-directories.
Yea thats not what im talking about, when you successfuly copy the windows directory over(you need a boot disk to do this) and try to start up windows the boot.ini will point windows to the wrong drive. You will see
If the machine with your new drive in it will be EXACTLY like the machine with the old drive in it - use Ghost. It will make a binary copy of the drive and allow you to apply it to a computer. Cannot use it in a different computer tho...
yeah diff hardware could totally screw you, hell with windows different serial numbers could screw you, I'd go the nero route....
Ghost Writer I believe its called will work with Windows XP, AutoCadd (which you must register via net to activate), etc. But the computers must be the same hardware as it does a clone of one drive to the other. If you're running on a network I think you have to go in an redefine each macine's IP address. Also you need a twisted cable, I think it is, a special cable to run hard drive to hard drive, can't do it on a LAN, serial, or whatever. I've done this at work, but it's been awhile. We'd image one drive then run it around physically to other computers and clone drive to drive.
use ghost or install windows and all of the other programs you need on the new drive, and copy all of the rest of your files over
Thanks for all the responses. I figured out what my problem was with copying windows via drag & drop, and am now smacking myself. It was all because of the virtual memory file win389.swp. When I first tried to copy the hard drives I was pressed for time, so didn't have a chance to really look into the errors I was getting. But it came down to that 1 file that was being used for VM. So I disabled the virtual memory and it copied just fine. Thanks again.
You might come across problems later on. Mainly with registry files. I recomend (as others have) to do it properly and ghost the drive.
