Does PC-DOS have its own backup app?

There is an app called ImageDisk 1.18 that is open source and can be downloaded from www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm

The readme file only mentions floppies, so it's not clear whether it can backup hard drives, but I imagine it can as it works on any file system.

What size the hard disk is?

Back in the days I used an old version of
GHOST (before NORTON bought it) and it was
working very fine, working even with a
lapling cable via LPT.

I've cloned lot of old drives with MHDD,
the command TOF writes a specified number
of sectors of source drive to a destination
file on another path (as long as there aren't
bad sectors on source).

MHDD is freeware and can be get from here

https://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

but I don't remember if last version works on
a 386. Should try an older version but it can
be not easy to find.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-12-02, 08:54:

There is an app called ImageDisk 1.18 that is open source and can be downloaded from www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm

The readme file only mentions floppies, so it's not clear whether it can backup hard drives, but I imagine it can as it works on any file system.

verysaving wrote on 2020-12-03, 02:21:

What size the hard disk is? […]
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What size the hard disk is?

Back in the days I used an old version of
GHOST (before NORTON bought it) and it was
working very fine, working even with a
lapling cable via LPT.

I've cloned lot of old drives with MHDD,
the command TOF writes a specified number
of sectors of source drive to a destination
file on another path (as long as there aren't
bad sectors on source).

MHDD is freeware and can be get from here

https://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

but I don't remember if last version works on
a 386. Should try an older version but it can
be not easy to find.

Thank for the responses guys, I tried an old version of Norton Ghost and it locked up so I ended up using XCOPY from a DR-DOS floppy I had laying around - I'm pretty sure it got all of the file, the folder had the exact same number of files and occupied space as CHKDSK reported on the original HDD. It's a 30MB hard drive by the way.

It looks like that version of MHDD can run on a 386 but you need 4MB RAM. Next time I'll give ImageDisk a try, I could have sworn it requires more than 1920KB RAM as well though.

Here's a photo of the full setup in case anyone is curious 😜 Japanese IBM PS/55 machines didn't ship with Model Ms, they used 5576 series keyboard but I don't have one of those at the moment. I was concerned that the Japanese BIOS might not like the Texelec Adlib clone because it hadn't been tested in a PS/55, but it works great!

ghost.exe has several command line options to deal with locking problems when accessing the hard disk.
ghost.exe -? should give you a list.
I used the dos version a lot backupping Win9X systems, and from time to time had to disable direct access
to disk to make it work.

I found this old version of MHDD that should work with older PC.
http://cz.nnhost.ru/soft/HDD/mhdd2.9/

BTW good job with XCOPY.

Durandal wrote on 2020-12-05, 11:31:

Here's a photo of the full setup in case anyone is curious 😜 Japanese IBM PS/55 machines didn't ship with Model Ms, they used 5576 series keyboard but I don't have one of those at the moment. I was concerned that the Japanese BIOS might not like the Texelec Adlib clone because it hadn't been tested in a PS/55, but it works great!

Looks Great !

Nice PC!

You can use Norton Diskedit (DOS, part of Norton Utilities) for creating 1:1 images of floppies and hard disks. Select a physical device and then you can select somewhere "save to file" or similar. Then you select a file on your 2nd HD and it creates a standard disk image which can be mounted on a modern PC, too.

Xcopy will copy all files, but it will be difficult to find a way to boot this rare DOS Version again with such backup.