Clone the entire drive with the disk cloning software of your choice and write the image to your new drive.

You can normally copy the C:\WINDOWS directory, just make sure you're using an LFN-aware utility, and note that you may be unable to copy C:\WINDOWS\WIN386.SWP - but of course, nothing worth preserving in that file.

feda wrote on 2024-07-12, 02:16:

Clone the entire drive with the disk cloning software of your choice and write the image to your new drive.

I thought about that. Any recommendations on a tool for that that runs on a Mmx 200 pentium?

Grzyb wrote on 2024-07-12, 02:22:

You can normally copy the C:\WINDOWS directory, just make sure you're using an LFN-aware utility, and note that you may be unable to copy C:\WINDOWS\WIN386.SWP - but of course, nothing worth preserving in that file.

Any suggestion on a tool? Would xcopy work? Can I do it from dos mode or do I need a boot disk?

Copying Windows only will preserve those files but leave other stuff (boot, Program Files, and hidden files if you're not careful). Cloning is much more reliable as it preserves everything including file attributes.
I used Norton Ghost before to do such backups. It's intuitive and runs in DOS.. IIRC it's even a booter. Just make sure you have enough space on a different drive than the one you're cloning.

My preferred procedure would be:
- connect the new HDD as the only one
- boot from diskette
- run FDISK, remove all existing partitions (if any), create the new partition, make sure it's set as active, reboot
- format c: /u
- sys c:
- reboot, and make sure DOS boots from the HDD
- connect the old HDD as the first (Primary Master), and the new HDD as the second (eg. Secondary Master)
- boot Windows from the first HDD
- run FAR (or some other LFN-aware file manager), and simply copy everything from the old HDD to the new one, ignoring the error while copying WIN386.SWP
- disconnect the old HDD, connect the new one as Primary Master, and boot...

Tempest wrote on 2024-07-12, 03:25:

Would xcopy work? Can I do it from dos mode or do I need a boot disk?

Xcopy is enough, you can just copy the whole drive ignoring anything that fails, for example the swap file. You need to do it from windows though, in a command prompt window and not dos, in order to maintain LFN and have available the extra xcopy parameters that preserve file attributes. Then sys.com the new drive, make sure the partition is active and you're done, it'll boot.

If you want, there are some useful utilities at https://dosprograms.info.tt/indexall.htm to support LFNs and USB flash drives. I haven't successfully tried the LFN support, but the USB driver there I use is finicky and requires the flash drive to be plugged into the first available USB port. It also didn't always work for me.