Copying Windows 9x, or Hard Drive To Another Hard Drive

How can I use a new big hard drive to replace a small hard drive in the machine running win95 (as OS) and some microsoft programs like Office 97 without reinstalling win95 and Office 97?
Thanks

Answer by Dennis on 12/9/1999, in reply to "Replacing Hard Drive".

Kevin, there are a couple of ways to do this, but the safest and most effective would be to suggest that you obtain a copy of Drive Image from Powerquest.com, install it and create an image of your hard drive.

Now boot into a command prompt only, find Win.com in C:\Windows and rename it to Win.old

Now shut down and install your new drive as "C" and leave your old drive as "D".

Set up the drive in your system, then boot to the Drive Image disks you would make during the installation and recover the image and restore it to the new drive. Becareful to make sure that you choose to allow the large partition size for the new drive.


If you are upgrading to a larger hard drive and don't want to go through the process of re-installing Windows95, it is very easy to copy your existing version to your new drive

The first steps are to:

1.  Install your new hard drive as a secondary

2.  Boot to Windows95

Partition your new hard drive. Only make one partitiion, even if you want to make more later. This way it will be active when you make it the primary drive later on.

Format the new hard drive with the /S parameter. This will make it bootable.

1st, Clear up the mis-understanding about Xcopy.
See: Xcopy Xposed at
http://www.pcguide.com/art/xcopy.htm

Thanks for catching my mistake Russell Demetree


Method 1 - Using XCOPY

Open a DOS Window from within Windows95. This will allow you to copy the necessary Hidden files. You cannot use the XCOPY by just booting to DOS. You have to have Win95 running for all the switches to be available.

Assuming you are copying everything from the C: drive to a new D: drive: type XCOPY C:\ D:\ /S /E /H /C /K /R

The /S switch includes subdirectories.
The /E switch includes empty subdirectories.
The /H switch includes hidden files.
The /C switch continues copying on an error.
The /K switch keeps the file's current attributes.
The /R switch writes over any read-only files

Method 2 - Using the Explorer

1.  Open the Explorer

2.  Make sure you can view hidden files - View / Options / Show all files

3.  Move to the root of your C: Drive

4.  Highlight the first directory in the right hand panel

5.  Press Shift-End to select all files and subdirectories

6.  Unselect the file WIN386.SWP While over one of the highlighted files or directories, right click on the mouse and select Copy.

7.  Move to the root of your new hard drive

8.  Right click the mouse and select Paste

When you are done with either method, remove your original hard drive, set your new hard drive to be a Master, and re-start the computer.

Going from SCSI to IDE

If your current primary drive is SCSI and you want to add an IDE drive, there is an additional step. This is due to not being able to have a SCSI drive be primary when an IDE drive is installed.

1.  Install both hard drives in the computer.

2.  Install Windows95 onto the IDE drive.

3.  Use either of the above methods for copying the SCSI to the IDE drive

You should now be able to boot from 4.  the IDE drive and have your SCSI for applications or data.

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