Hmm. You can use a hardware-based copier.

https://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articl … 271195&seqNum=3

I used a similar device to clone a Macintosh HDD to an SSD.
When all other solutions failed..

Try making an image file of the drive with WinImage, then write that file to the card.

Hi,

I probably never cloned an HDD to CF (yet), but this comes to mind:
- Make sure the resulting partition in the CF card is marked as active/bootable
- Maybe ran a "sys c:" from a bootable floppy with your OS against your CF connected as C: (assuming you're running some DOS or win 9x).
- Try good'ol Ghost for the clonning (you might ran into troubles if your HDD is too much larger than your CF)

Also, if the system is 486 or older it might not be seeing the CF as it should. Have you tried to simply partition de card and create a bootable MBR to confirm it does boot in a rather minimalistic condition?

HTH

I use this tool for such tasks (HDD Raw Copy Tool):

https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

I always use it to copy between differently sized HDDs/CF Cards/USB sticks... and DOS is always happy when I boot from those devices. The nice thing about the tool is that it "fails" successfully if you copy from a large image to a small disk. That is, the small disk will actually still boot.. but data on sectors not written will of course be missing.

For starters it would be good to know what OS are you trying to clone.

I would use some old version of Ghost (around 2000) and do a full HDD clone. This usually does the trick.

I've tried cloning a Windows 95 and 98 hard drive - with the same results. It's an AST P166 PC.

Plugging in the HDD into the Windows 10 machine, taking the image, then writing it back to the CF.

I can get the CF to work if I boot the Pentium PC using an MS-DOS floppy and formatting/etc the disk.

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2022-10-17, 00:21:

Try making an image file of the drive with WinImage, then write that file to the card.

Would I need the full, purchased version of WinImage?

mhardisty wrote on 2022-10-17, 11:28:

I've tried cloning a Windows 95 and 98 hard drive - with the same results. It's an AST P166 PC.

Plugging in the HDD into the Windows 10 machine, taking the image, then writing it back to the CF.

I can get the CF to work if I boot the Pentium PC using an MS-DOS floppy and formatting/etc the disk.

Hi there! Is it possible to clone the HDD in the old PC itself somehow?
I'm asking, because Acronis True Image 7 to 10 might be bootable on that PC, if it has 64MB of RAM.

Or more precisely, the emergency boot medium (DOS version, not Linux version).

Acronis True Image 7 recovery medium can be installed on a set of diskettes.
It's also able to create backups, not just write them back.
That's something I really valued about the older Acronis products.
Because, that way, they do support non-Windows PCs, too.

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

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 drive to CF using the old PC .

If it's okay I'd like to piggyback on to this thread with the following:

I have a machine that has a weird dual boot setup, with Windows 98 and "wary puppy Linux" set up using GRUB. I actually like this combination as Linux makes it easier to do certain things on the windows partition, like copy zip files from flash drives etc.
How do I best clone this whole setup to a CF card? I figure i need to clone the MBR along with the exact partition setup.

mhardisty wrote on 2022-10-17, 11:28:

I've tried cloning a Windows 95 and 98 hard drive - with the same results. It's an AST P166 PC.

Plugging in the HDD into the Windows 10 machine, taking the image, then writing it back to the CF.

I can get the CF to work if I boot the Pentium PC using an MS-DOS floppy and formatting/etc the disk.

I've recently come across a little DOS application named "spfdisk" that allows you to check/set the "active" flag on your partitions, I would check that on the CF while running on P166.

I think it might also let you perform a "rebuild MBR". (Don't do that on your win 10 machine, just in case)

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

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 drive to CF using the old PC .

darry's suggestion might be worth looking at too, considering this is w9x we're talking this has chances to work out.

Then again... considering how easy it is to install win 9x, by this time I wonder if all of this is worth the trouble or you are better off by reinstalling straight to de CF card...

dunzdeck wrote on 2022-10-22, 13:50:

If it's okay I'd like to piggyback on to this thread with the following:

I have a machine that has a weird dual boot setup, with Windows 98 and "wary puppy Linux" set up using GRUB. I actually like this combination as Linux makes it easier to do certain things on the windows partition, like copy zip files from flash drives etc.
How do I best clone this whole setup to a CF card? I figure i need to clone the MBR along with the exact partition setup.

Hi, you need a cloning software that understands linux filesystems. Acronis True Image usually does, Ghost does not.
If this a one time goal you might want to look into partimage wich is Linux native, I don't know how it handles this now, but several year ago it would not allow to to restore to a partition/disk smaller than the original one, that was a deal breaker for me so I've only used it a few times.

Regarding grub... ah, grub... don't like it one bit... I' d say you better be prepared to boot some Live CD, chroot into Puppy and repair it from there.

Check System Rescue CD as it has many of these tools
https://www.system-rescue.org/

If you go ahead with this and decide to post back for more suggestion it would probably be better to split this into it's own thread.

HTH.

Have you tried the 'dd' command from a Linux live environment?

Linux 'dd' command should theoretically produce an image that's an 1:1 replication of the original. You may try this if all other methods fail.

I have used 'dd' a few times to clone the finished state of a VM's hard disk, which would then be put into an actual hard disk (or CF card) and it will boot just fine there. So far I haven't encountered a case where the target disk written using 'dd' would not boot.

PS: It's also possible that your CF card is reporting a different geometry than your HDD which may lead to issues. Check the "sectors per track" (or simply "sectors") part of your CF card's geometry. I recall seeing my own CF cards reporting 32 SPT instead of the usual 63, and that caused issues with some bootloaders (like AirBoot), as more sectors in the first track are needed for the boot code. I think those geometry values (namely sectors-per-track part) should carry over if you cloned the disk to the target exactly as it was on the source, as it's technically possible to override the geometry values with your own in the disk's boot records, which can be done using tools like DFSee.

mhardisty wrote on 2022-10-16, 19:17:

I've tried ImgBurn, Win32DiskImager and Macrum Reflect to clone to files/folders over.

Don't know what your problem is with Macrium Reflect but I use that program already for many years without issues.

Using it for backup/restore, cloning, resizing etc. This is to and from CF cards, SSD's and HDD's. OS shouldn't matter but I used it from DOS all the way to Windows 11 without problems.

Only thing I can think off is that you try to do a partition restore instead of an disk restore. In that case the MBR will not be restored.