On Wednesday, March 01, 2000 10:49 AM, "Rick Swartz" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:


> Hello Walter,
>
> Tuesday, February 29, 2000, 12:41:11 PM, you wrote:
>
> >>Walter R Worth and Herbert Graf wrote of using XCOPY to copy from one
> >>hard drive to another. It would help if they could give their
procedures.
> >>I have used XCOPY a number of times, but not for copying a hard drive.
> >>
>
> > Here is one way of doing so: XCOPY32 C:*.* D:/E/C/H/R/K will copy the
entire
> > contents of Drive C: to Drive D:  with all directories and
subdirectories
>
> Maybe  this should be added to a FAQ (Previous PCBUILD posts - credits to
> Bill Cohane (may he live long and prosperous) and Raymond Chen):
>
> The procedure, as I have seen it related here, is as follows:
> Set any jumper on the new drive to make it a slave, then install
> it as the primary slave
> From a DOS box running in Win95 enter the xcopy command with the
> following syntax
>
> xcopy c:\ d:\ /r /i /c /h /k /e /y
>
> This should copy everything. We're assuming that you've fdisked,
> created an active partition, and formatted the new drive
>
<snipped only to avoid excessive quoting>

Thanks Rick for further expanding the info on this particular thread.  The
xcopy c:\d:\/r/i/c/k/e/y command is another excellent way of copying either
files or programs to another directory and/or hard drive in this case as you
have so thoroughly pointed out.  We have debated this subject heatedly but
in good spirits on several other list forums that I am a frequent
contributor of. Tom Turak's contribution should not escape mentioned as
well. One things that he made mention of (and it does not matter because it
is trivial, and I am not nitpicking), that the format /s switch could be
used.  I made a similar post to a few other list and I was told that a
format /s is NEVER required if you are
doing a xcopy c:\ d:\ r/i/c/h/k/e/y type of command from a bootable HD to a
previously formatted HD.  This is because the necessary system files are
copied during the xcopy operation.  If the destination drive was not
previously formatted then a simple format would work without the /s option,
although the /s option does not hurt anything and adds very little to the
time it takes to format.

OTOH, using this command may possibly change of some SFN's and not which
sector a file occupies, then whether or not you get an "exact copy" will
depend entirely on the names of the folders and files on the source HD.  It
is "possible" to have a HD that will not cause any SFN problems, although
this is probably not true of most HD's.  Xcopy is no longer my preferred
method for
the creating the original HD dupe.  However, it does still have use as an
updating/archiving tool (not necessarily with the "richkey" options) once
the clone has been made.

If a person doesn't have one of the more modern duplicating utilities and
doesn't want to spend the money for one, then xcopy /r/i/c/h/k/e/y can still
be used if proper after copy attention and corrections are made.  HTH.  :-)

Walter R. Worth
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