Let's see if I have this right. You have a fully installed and working hard drive. You want to copy a clean install over it. Then duplicate it to an empty drive. I would suggest duplicating first, then copy the clean install over the duplicate on the formerly empty drive. That way you won't damage the one that is working if it doesn't accomplish what hope for.

No reason why that shoudn't work.

Back on all of my old W98SE PCs I used to do full hard drive backups like this. I had a spare drive (my backup drive) that I had previously partioned, formatted, and made bootable.

Then when I wanted to do a full backup, I'd pop in the backup drive, delete *everything* on it, and then use Windows Commander (a.k.a. Total Commander) to copy the entire contents of the normal working drive to the backup drive.

In the case of a HD failure, all I had to do was to remove the working drive and install the backup drive as the primary master (in place of the working drive). Boot her up, and all was well with the world... at least, as it was when I had preformed the previous backup 😀

Anyhoo, yes... if you have a blank drive that has been FAT-32 partitioned/formatted/made bootable (with an active partition), you can simply copy the contents of one drive to that hard drive; and it should bootup into W9X looking just like the first drive 😀

rfnagel wrote:

Anyhoo, yes... if you have a blank drive that has been FAT-32 partitioned/formatted/made bootable (with an active partition), you can simply copy the contents of one drive to that hard drive; and it should bootup into W9X looking just like the first drive 😀

Cheers! This was exactly what I was looking for!

I considered using that msbatch thingy, but this would be much simpler 😀

Just get an empty drive ready (formatted and made bootable), copy an entire Windows on it (previously copied from another working harddrive) which has all the tweaks and other updates on it, et voila!

Much faster and convenient then having to do separate installs all the time!
And as a bonus, I can simply copy all needed drivers along. Won't even needa dedicated USB drive with drivers 😁

This sounds awesome!!

Tetrium wrote:

Cheers! This was exactly what I was looking for!

Superb 😀 Yep, that's how I did backups back in my (not too long ago) W98SE days, and was BY FAR the easiest way to do a full system backup 😀

In my W98SE PCs at the time, I had two removable hard drive "caddies", and I didn't even have a "working" main hard drive installed in one of the internal bays of the PC. My main hard drive was in one of the caddies, and the extra caddy I kept my backup drive installed in.

After performing a full system backup, I'd remove the caddy with the backup drive and store it in a safe place 😀

P.S. Pics of one of the PCs that I had the caddies in:

http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwood … ad_97_Large.jpg
http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwood … ad_36_Large.jpg

Needless to say, when I upgraded to my current rig with Windows XP Pro (NTFS), I couldn't do full systems backups the same way (or as *easy* as I could) as I did under W98SE (FAT32) <aarrgghh!>. I ended up on settling on using Norton Ghost v9.0, which is about the only way that I can do a full system backup as easy as possible under NTFS.

Windows Commander under FAT32 made it *EXTREMELY EASY*... simply delete everything on the backup drive, select everything on the source drive, and hit "Copy files". Go away a bit for a cup of coffee, and a while later the whole backup was done... a mirror image of my existing W98SE installation(s) 😀

P.P.S. I've previously done this exact same thing on a bunch of other OEM PCs that I've built up eons ago (IIRC about 15 of the exact same PCs; same mobos and such)... Install W98SE on one PC (along with any optional programs; Microsoft Office 2000, etc...), partition/format/make bootable all of the rest of the hard drives, and use WC/TC to copy all of the files from the fresh W98SE installation to the other hard drives (one at a time).

Install all of the hard drives in the other 15 PCs, and whamo... 15 PCs with the same OS ready to go out the door 😀

Man...why didn't I know this 10 years ago, L O L!

Tetrium wrote:

Man...why didn't I know this 10 years ago, L O L!

Hehe, apparently you didn't:

Work on PCs/and want to go play DOOM while the PCs in question did as much work on their own as feesibly possible (while you played DOOM <grin>).

🤣!

You know, the thing is that I did look on the net for easy ways to clone 9x installations and this never popped up. All I got were things like msbatch, some other "easy" (lmao) tricks along with lots of trialwhares. Why is something as simple as this not all over the net??

That's because computers were freaking expensive and rarely did anyone try funny tricks on probably the only computer they own and possibly live on.

Another question:Anyone happen to know if it's possible to browse a Virtual Harddisk?
The idea is to install 9x on a Virtual PC (=faster and results in a cleaner install. Also MUCH easier to tinker with) and then copy the entire stuff off of the virtual harddrive?

Found 1 util that's as easy as what I wanted, Winimage!

Too bad it's not free, I don't know (and doubt) if Winimage free version can browse those files.

Perhaps an old version of Winimage can do that?

I always loved Winimage, and now I love it even more! 😁

Now the only thing I'd need to do is write some standard scripts that can easily change things like the computer name and such, but that's basically a matter of fiddling with the registry and perhaps a little bit of batch magic 😀

Tetrium wrote:

Found 1 util that's as easy as what I wanted, Winimage!

I'm not 100% (as I've never looked for it before), but I wouldn't be surprised if someone hasn't already coded a plugin for Windows Commander (Total Commander) to do just that.

I have a slew of plugins that I've downloaded and installed for WC/TC throughout the years;

ones that allow opening ISO images, Install Shield/Nullsoft/MS MSI installers, Duke Nukem 3D "GRP files, id Software "WAD" files, StarCraft "MPQ" files, as well as a bunch of others;

as easy as viewing a standard ZIP file from within WC/TC (opens the file in one of the WC/TC panels like entering a directory on your hard drive) 😀

Anyhow, I've never looked for a WC/TC plugin to browse hard disk (or floppy disk) images, but who knows... there just might be one available.

rfnagel wrote:

'm not 100% (as I've never looked for it before), but I wouldn't be surprised if someone hasn't already coded a plugin for Windows Commander (Total Commander) to do just that.

Hmmm... found these plugins for WC/TC here -> http://www.ghisler.com/plugins.htm :

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"IMG(1)"

Open floppy disk image files (1.44 MB). Only supports short (DOS) names. Source also available.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"IMG(2)"

Advanced floppy image (diskimage, rawread etc.) plugin: create IMG (different sizes, use "Configure" button to choose), extract, add and delete files. Long filename support. More advanced than IMG(1), but without source code.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"DiskInternals Reader"

This plugin offers access to harddisk partitions and disk images.

Native reader for:
Ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, HFS/HFS+, NTFS, Fat/exFAT

Native support for:
- Windows and Linux software raid arrays
- Adaptec, nVidia, Intel, Via, Silicon raid arrays
- MBR, GPT, BSD and Apple partitions
- VMWare, VirtualPC, VirtualBox and Parallels disk images

100% symbolic links support for Linux, Mac and Ntfs. First ever Linux and Mac Reader that can display correct size for link that point to file.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

dont a lot of hdd manufactures offer free tools for cloning a drive ?

Davros wrote:

dont a lot of hdd manufactures offer free tools for cloning a drive ?

That may be, but simply having 2 harddrives attached and then dragging the whole Windows directory to an empty bootable harddrive is just so much more convenient.

I don't like all those extra programs, to me they are basically an extra interface with extra things that can go wrong.
I prefer to be able to do it all with Windows Explorer 😀

DiskExplorer can browse VHD images, if I'm not mistaken.

I was reading a while ago that it might also be possible to mount them as virtual drives in Windows, but it can be tricky.

Jorpho wrote:

DiskExplorer can browse VHD images, if I'm not mistaken.

I was reading a while ago that it might also be possible to mount them as virtual drives in Windows, but it can be tricky.

Thanks for the tip. Something that can browse virtual harddrives as if they are zip files is perfect for me, particularly if it leaves the files themselves intact (like write protection etc).

And I don't like tricky 😜

Jorpho wrote:

I was reading a while ago that it might also be possible to mount them as virtual drives in Windows, but it can be tricky.

I know in Windows 7 it's possible to mount a VHD. Do it from the Disk Manager and attach one.