HARD DISK DRIVES - C-D-C-D - yes really!

[InFinRetirement]

You only have 24hrs to answer this please -then PPruNe goes off the air till Sunday/Monday.

I have replaced my C: Drive with a larger cap and have copied over all files of Windows 98 and done SYS transfer. Successfully on the face of it. Made the new drive Master and the old C:=D: and a slave.

Problem: New drive will not boot. If I make the old C: master again it still boots OK. D: sits there with all the same files and OS in it and it doesn't want to play.

Anyone any ideas please.

[PilotOfficer]

When you say you copied all files, had you set up the new drive as either a slave to #1 primary, or as primary on #2 slot?

Normally, it's best to set up the new drive from scratch as #1 primary, partition, format and then install the OS.

Set up the old HDD as either slave to the new drive, or make it the primary on the second slot. Then simply drag and drop all your stuff one drive to the other.

If your new drive goes down, you can soon boot from the old drive (swap leads etc).

Hope this helps. :)

[spannersatcx]

What did you use to copy over the files. If it is a seagate hdd it should come with a utility called discwizard and has a file copy utility, I think you can still use it even if you don't have a seagate drive, which is downloadable.
I did the same recently and had a similar problem. Check the jumpers for master and slave, I'm sure you have, in the end I think I had to put them on seperate IDE channels for it to boot up. Make sure the formatting of the new drive was correct and the dos/active partitions have been assigned correctly.
Normally the newer drive will need to be the master. Different BIOSs and ATA controllers can impact this. If you have determined that both ATA drives are jumpered correctly for master/slave and they still do not work, try to bring the new drive up as a stand alone or single drive. If the new drive works fine as a stand alone and fails as a slave, try bringing it up as the master with the original drive as the slave. Jumper changes will be necessary on both drives.

If the drives work in this configuration, there is a decision to be made. You can leave the drives in the working configuration and transfer the necessary data from the original drive (now slave) to the new master drive. If the reverse configuration is preferred, then you will need to purchase a “co-resident” ATA controller. A co-resident ATA controller has two special features. The first is its address is set to secondary, allowing it to be installed in the computer with your original ATA controller, which is set to primary. The second is it has a BIOS onboard that allows two additional ATA hard drives to be installed in your system.

[InFinRetirement]

PO, did all that but it wouldn't untill.....

Spanners, knew I could count on you. It is a Seagate and I had their DiskW and did a proper install. Then copied C: to D: - all seemed well but it wouldn't boot. In the early hours had a brainwave, almost counted the files that went over, but did discover 9 that were left behind. Put them over and Bingo D: changed to C: and v-v now all is well except I now need to copy the old D: drive on to a larger cap D: drive. I have a seperate I/O controller with another IDE slot so I guess I can use that - what do you think. Now that everything is working OK I am about to format old C: first.

Thanks to both of you for coming to the rescue.

[Tinstaafl]

I had a similar problem with a laptop.

Installed a new HD then purchased a caddy to put the old drive in, accessing it via the PC-Card slot.

Win98 kept freezing & then reporting that the device caused it and Win98 would never access the device again.

Finally realised that the old disc still had a partition set as 'active', causing a conflict between the new disk's active partition and the old disk's active partition. Win98 will only accept a single active partition.

Removed the 'active' status from the old HD & now it works properly.

[InFinRetirement]

Good one Tinny. Cept I tried that and the pooter would not recognise the drive.

Anyway all is well now but I did have to format the stuff I had on the D: drive I wanted to put back. Oh well, as it was two flight sims I really don't get the time to use anymore - with all I do on PPRuNe, it don't seem so bad after all. Now I have a total of 38gbs on 2 drives. That has to be good enough for anyone I'd have thought. Especially me.

Thanks for the help. Till Monday.

[BOAC]

Slightly off topic, IFR, but one of the best bits of advice I ever had was to keep a full Win 3.1 set in a folder on my C drive, and I have a 3.5" which boots and runs it via autoexec (with MSDOS 'Edit' on it too!) I guess it was 'in use' files that you didn't get transferred(?), and having the GUI/move/copy properties of 3.1 saves an awful lot of MSDOSing. I have 'fallen back' on 3.1 endless times!
Mike

[Air Brakes]

InFin,

When you refer to the fact that your machine will not boot I assume you mean it will not successfully load windows after you have copied all the files, it just goes to C:> prompt or close to this.

If this is the case then try this.

1) Format the desired HD (Large one)
2) Use Sys to create a bootable HD. By this I mean that a C:> will appear when you turn the machine on.
3) Copy all the files off the source disk (Small one), to the target disk (Large one) and tell it to replace any files it asks you about. If you reboot you should be able to start the machine and be in Windows. A few drivers may reload as Windows readjusts to the new HD but all should be fine.

The reason for this is that Windows makes some minor changes MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS. If these files are from a different copy of Windows then the software just freeks out and goes off into the weeds.

If this fails contact Velvet and she will be able to get me and I can think of something else.

Have fun......

[InFinRetirement]

Thanks everyone. Really most helpful but I am OK now. The Problem WAS that when I copied over the original C: to D: some files were left behind which included Autoexe - any way 9 files in all after I did comparisons in half page mode, flipping from C: to D: - it tends to show differences.

Once I sussed that I pulled them over, re-booted and away it went with no further problems.

Thanks again,

IFR

[OzPax1]

I a use a piece of software called GHOST. It automates the whole partitioning, mirroring and copying process. Never had a problem while installing a new bigger drive with it.

[InFinRetirement]

OZPAX1. That GHOST sounds interesting should I need it in the future.

Know where to get one?

Cheers.

[OzPax1]

InFinRetirement, got my copy Of Noton Ghost from PC World. They should have plenty of copys! ;)Or you Chould try to buy it from the Symantec web site. Here is the link to the Ghost page of Symantec's website. Symantec Norton Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/region/uk/product/ghost/ghost_personal/) :)


[This message has been edited by OzPax1 (edited 01 April 2001).]

[Mac the Knife]

Hi fellers, hullo spanners

Found this in my pile of useful junk. It works.

HOW TO MOVE YOUR OS

Open «My computer» and record the label (name) of the C: disk if any. Install the new disk in a free place (slave in primary or master or slave in secondary). Set the jumpers of the hard disks for this configuration and update the BIOS settings.

Fdisk & Format /s your new disk with DOS7 (or 7.1 if you have OSR2), from straight "command prompt only" (not from within win95). Then reboot and with win95 running open a DOS window and perform xcopy as follows:
Assuming that the new drive is temporary installed as D:, from the root of D:\ execute: XCOPY32 C:\*.* /E /K /H /C /R /Y (from the DOS window, you can type "xcopy32/? |more" to see what the switches are about)

Now you can set your new disk as C:. Don't install for the moment the old C: disk. Boot from diskette and make his primary partition "active" with fdisk. Change to «C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND» directory and execute «label C:». Give the same label as your old disk had. You can now boot as normal from C:
When you will be sure that everything is working properly (It is not bad idea to leave aside the old C: for a couple of days if you can), you can install (if you want) your old disk as second HD. Only that after installing it, boot to «command prompt only» and execute «label D:» to change the old label to a new. (don't let windows see another disk with the same label). The best is to make a new format to this HD at this moment.

Notes: Don't perform xcopy32 from DOS boot. Does not work.
You must have a boot diskette with fdisk.
Before xcopy you must:

1. Clear temporary internet files from the properties of IE3,
2. Delete all ~*.tmp files that have a previous date,
3. Empty recycle bin and
4. Scandisk C: (don't perform scandisk before delete internet temp files)
5. Before perform xcopy, disable all scheduled tasks, active virus checkers, "navboot", screen savers and anything possible that can alter the disk contents during xcopy. After xcopy ensure that the "msdos.sys" of your drive C: has replace the other that format has put in your D:

Don't worry about swapfile. The /c switch above is for continuing copying after the failed attempt to copy swapfile. When boot from the new disk, swapfile will be recreated automatically. Using xcopy from within win95 prevents long filenames and attributes transfer even in directories.

Only for 950 & 950a users:
Xcopy32 could not transfer the attributes of your folders (System, Hidden, Read-only). Special folders are attribute sensitive, so you must restore manually the "fonts" and "briefcase" folders.
>From a DOS window execute:
ATTRIB +S C:\WINDOWS\FONTS
ATTRIB +R C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\BRIEFCASE
Change your path in the above lines if needed
Fonts folder can be also repaired from TweakUI
The rest of the special folders are self repaired the next time you gone use their services. A repaired folder should begin to looks and acts as normal after the next reboot.

Here is the attributes for the usual windows folders for your reference:
C:\WINDOWS\FONTS (S)
C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\BRIEFCASE (R)
C:\RECYCLED (SH) - self repaired
C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY (R) - self repaired by IE3.01 but not by IE3
C:\WINDOWS\TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES (R) - self repaired
C:\WINDOWS\INF, SHELLNEW, SYSBCKUP, SPOOL are hidden folders, but this seems not necessary for their functionality.

PS1: Xcopy32 from 950b (SR2) version transfers the folder attributes, even if used in the older 950 & 950a installations.
PS2: Xcopy is a loader of Xcopy32. It doesn't matter if you call xcopy or xcopy32. It only matters if you call it from within windows or from command prompt only.
PS3: Executing xcopy from a full screen (but from within Windows of course), makes xcopy to perform considerably faster that executing it from a normal window.