Win98 Clone procedure

ChartMan

Legendary member
Messages
5,580
Likes
47
I'll start from basics. The PC nerds can cut straight to the bit. :) (17.)

1. Get a new Hard drive big enough to do the job. Now is an opportunity to buy a bigger,faster drive.This, once cloned, can be used as your new drive, giving a small increase in performance.
2. Make a bootable floppy, and include on it FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM (these are in c:\windows\command).
3. make sure your boot sequence is A;C;SCSI (or similar, so you can boot from floppy.)
4.Open up your PC case and remove the cable and power from your Hard drive ( C: ). Connect in its place your new drive.( The stripe on the cable goes next to the power plug). Make sure your BIOS is set to " Auto Detect Hard Drives"
5.Put the boot floppy you made in the A drive and switch on the machine. Your PC will now boot to DOS .
6: From the A prompt , type FDISK
7. Say YES to large drive support
8. Select 1- Create DOS partition
9. Select 1- Create Primary DOS Partition
10.When the % counting stops,press enter to select the full drive capacity.
11. When that completes,press escape and turn off your PC. Turn it back on and re-boot from the floppy.
12. from the A prompt, type FORMAT C: (return). When this is done, you're now ready to clone your new drive.
13.Switch off the PC. REMOVE the hard drive you just formatted and reconnect your old hard drive. Now remove the data cable and power from your CD ROM, and connect in its place your newly formatted drive. Again make sure your BIOS setting for the hard drives are all set to AUTO.
IF your PC has been built by a cheapskate, you may have your hard drive and CD ROM connected on the same cable. If this is the case, you will have to set your new hard drive to be a "SLAVE" or get another data cable and connect it to the "Secondary Master" on your motherboard. Either way, your new drive will be seen as "D" when you power up.
14. Remove the floppy and power up your system.Check you have got a "D" drive.Turn off Norton System works if you have it on your system.
15.Goto "Start, Programs, MSDOS Prompt. This will open up a DOS window in Win98.
16. Goto C:\
17. type this in exactly...notice the space between c: and d: and the first /

XCOPY32 C: D: /S/H/R/C/K/Y/Q

You will get one "error" message up saying "cannot copy windows swap file". This is normal. The swap file is automatically restored when you run the clone drive.
Eventually, the C prompt will return, and the drive is cloned.This goes at about 5Mb per second, so you can roughly calclate how long the drive will take to clone.
18. To test your new drive, just swap them over and re-boot.
You can also use this method if you are building a new PC to give you a copy of your old system without having to load all your application software.The only extra thing you will have to do is to load the motherboard drivers and any other hardware dependant drivers- ie different video card etc.But, you will have another true clone system at the end of it.
Good luck......

Now for some personal plugging.....If you need help on this, you can telephone me at work 01 252 515 666.
I can also offer a data recovery service if your hard drive goes faulty and you lose data. Success is dependant on wether the drive is mechanically faulty or not. Typical costs are £50-£100 depending on the amount of data recovered.The recovered data is supplied on CD.
I can recover drives that have been "FDISKED" or formatted by mistake. If your drive does go duff, the less you do to it, the greater the chance of recovery.
On the other hand,if you have a clone drive,you will never need this service :)
 
Top