At 02:44 PM 2/25/99 -0800, you wrote:
<SNIP>
>  Whether this is a "perfect copy" of a drive is open to a few
>remaining bits of argument.  For one thing, it will be a copy of a
>"volume" or partition, identified by a "drive letter", but it does not
>include a physical hard drive's partition table.
>  For another, the result will be an *equivalent* copy -- the same
>names and directory structure and contents as the original -- but it
>won't be fragmented, and the underlying format (FAT16 vs 32, for
>instance) needn't match.  So the result is different from doing a
>partition copy with a product like Partition Magic.
>  I would not call this copy "perfect", but for many purposes it may be
>more useful than an exact copy would be.

Just to add to the discussion on this:  I unfortunately had to use the xcopy
richkey today to copy a large failing hard drive to a smaller drive.  It worked
great but one other thing xcopy doesn't copy is the Windows Swap file.

In my case I was trying to compare the data on the two drives and didn't
realize at first that the swap file was missing from the "slave" drive.

As many of you know, it doesn't *need* to be copied as it regenerates itself
when Windoze 9x boots anyway.  Just something to keep in mind.


Eric

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