You could try copying the files using the Windows built-in robocopy command. I've had good luck with it, it's kind of like an rsync for Windows and might work better than using Explorer.

1robocopy /e X:\ C:\CFBackup\ 

<swap card>

1robocopy /e C:\CFBackup\ X:\

Where X:\ is the CF card reader. The /e switch will copy all directories, even if they're empty. There are a bunch of other possibly helpful switches viewable with /?:

1robocopy /?

If copying from FAT32 -> NTFS -> FAT32 is causing problems, one could use a FAT32 formatted flash drive as temporary storage. Alternatively one could image the source CF, mount the image in Windows, then robocopy from the mounted image to the destination CF card.

Symantec ghost floppy, local disk to disk option, it will even expand the partitions for you

Does the computer have BIOS that works with devices > 8.4GB?

Sounds like the system might have the 8.4GB ECHS limit or that the storage is not configured to use LBA in the BIOS.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Storage# … age_Limitations

dd followed by gparted is my usual workflow

I tried using robocopy to transfer the files from 8GB CF card -> 16GB FAT32 USB stick -> 64GB CF card but Win98 either throws up a exception in msgsrv32 or blue screens during bootup. I then downloaded Ghost 11.5.1 and used that to clone the 8GB CF card into an image then wrote that to the 64GB card but Win98 seems to hang during boot on a turquoise screen with the mouse pointer. Bringing up Task Manager shows that msgsrv32 is not responding.

I then tried a clean install of Win98 onto the 64GB card and that seems to work fine (the OS sees the whole 64GB as well) so it looks like something's been altered or corrupted during the boot or copy process somehow.

Were you doing the copy on the computer that runs windows 98?

No, doing it on my Win10 PC - there isn't enough room on the 8GB CF card to store the image if I use Ghost on the Dell Win98 machine and it only has the capacity to attach one CF card at a time.

Motherboard is an OEM Intel TE430VX which supports LBA, but many older BIOSes had issues/bug with accessing larger sizes ( for example, 40GB )

You can use the utility in this thread to test your BIOS's abilities . Are there any utilities available to test BIOS disk access routines for reliable LBA28 functionality ?

Latest Dell BIOS is A10 . I don't see a changelog . https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-ca/drive … mension-xps-m-s

# Machine info
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/dell-d … nsion-xps-m___s

# Motherboard manual for original Intel version
https://www.fermimn.edu.it/inform/materiali/e … bd/28181703.pdf

retrofan01 wrote on 2022-12-15, 17:25:

No, doing it on my Win10 PC - there isn't enough room on the 8GB CF card to store the image if I use Ghost on the Dell Win98 machine and it only has the capacity to attach one CF card at a time.

Is it possible that the Windows 10 computer is mounting the drive with a different geometry than the old DELL ?

douglar wrote on 2022-12-15, 20:20:

retrofan01 wrote on 2022-12-15, 17:25:

No, doing it on my Win10 PC - there isn't enough room on the 8GB CF card to store the image if I use Ghost on the Dell Win98 machine and it only has the capacity to attach one CF card at a time.

Is it possible that the Windows 10 computer is mounting the drive with a different geometry than the old DELL ?

I'm not sure of the differences between the two or how that would affect things?

I updated the BIOS on the Dell from A07 to A10, used Ghost to clone the 8GB card to the 64GB card but Win98 threw up errors on boot again. Tried EXTBIOS and extended disk access support is supported on the drive (plus it boots fine with the full 64Gb when I do a clean install of Win98 on it). At this point, I'm thinking I might get a refund for the 64GB card and switch the IDE-CF adaptor out for an IDE-SD card or IDE-SATA one instead...

douglar wrote on 2022-12-14, 18:45:

Does the computer have BIOS that works with devices > 8.4GB?

Sounds like the system might have the 8.4GB ECHS limit or that the storage is not configured to use LBA in the BIOS.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Storage# … age_Limitations

+1

Maybe the limit can be circumvented by using an USB cardreader *on* the Windows 98 PC itself.

For preparing the big CF card, I mean. Not for booting.

Just tried making a Ghost image of the 8GB CF card on my Win10 PC then copying it to the 64GB CF card. Then, I booted off a floppy on the Dell Win98 machine, copied ghost.exe from the 64GB CF card to the RAM disk then used it to write the image onto the 64GB card (Ghost seems to be smart enough not to overwrite itself). It still crashes on normal bootup but seems OK in safe mode... like something in the registry or on the filesystem is being corrupted!?

Jo22 wrote on 2022-12-17, 17:47:

+1

Maybe the limit can be circumvented by using an USB cardreader *on* the Windows 98 PC itself.

For preparing the big CF card, I mean. Not for booting.

Will try my USB card reader on the machine...

Do you have dma enabled in win98 for the 8GB CF you are trying to copy ?

Jo22 wrote on 2022-12-17, 17:47:

Maybe the limit can be circumvented by using an USB cardreader *on* the Windows 98 PC itself.

For preparing the big CF card, I mean. Not for booting.

I've plugged the 64GB CF card via my USB 3.0 card reader into the Dell Win98 machine. The CF card is detected as a drive and is accessible in Windows but when I set up a backup job in Ghost 2003 and restart the machine to boot into PC DOS in order to begin imaging, the 64GB CF card is no longer detected (i.e. it seems to be assigned drive letter F: then throws up Abort/Retry/Fail) even though the card reader was detected as a USB 1.1 device in Windows and I've set the USB 1.1 drivers to be loaded in Ghost's Advanced Settings prior to running the job.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-12-17, 19:21:

Do you have dma enabled in win98 for the 8GB CF you are trying to copy ?

Yes DMA is enabled on the 8GB CF card when I boot off it.

Try disabling the dma before copying. DMA can be different between drives.

retrofan01 wrote on 2022-12-17, 16:49:

I'm not sure of the differences between the two or how that would affect things?

There are multi CHS arrangements you can use to reach about same storage size. So if one computer is configured to use a different number of cylinders than the other, some of your files will look like they went through a shreader. USB adapters almost always use LBA. You could have problems if the legacy system is not using LBA. But if you are using LBA addressing on both systems, it wont be a problem.

Two suggestions

Option 1 :

a) Partition, format and make the new CF card bootable on the old PC using the same OS you have installed on the CF card.

b) Then use xcopy /e /h etc ( see https://www.computerhope.com/xcopyhlp.htm for complete reference) to copy all files and directories from the old CF card to new CF card using the old PC .

Option 2 :

a) Partition, format and make the new CF card bootable on the old PC using the same OS you have installed on the old CF card.

b) Copy all files and directories from the old CF card to the new CF card using a modern PC .

Disabling DMA looks to have fixed the issue -I've booted the Win98 Ghost image off the 64GB CF card multiple times without any problems and turning it back on brought back the crashing on startup. Thank you so much @douglar and everyone for your help and suggestions!