Using linux to clone a Windows ME disk?

[Jerry Feldman]

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Note that Knoppix has a graphical parititioning too, qtparted. 

In the past, I have backed up my Windows ME partitions with tar, and I
have restored them. The only real caveat is booting. The DOS utility,
sys.com is used to set up the appropriate pointer to msdos.sys et. al. 
here are the steps that I would use:
1. create a DOS boot floppy with sys.com on it:
windows/command/sys.com

2. Boot into your Knoppix system. Assume that /dev/hdaa is your wife's
old drive and /dev/hdb is the new drive. (hdb is usually the primary
slave and hdc is the secondary master).

3. Use cfdisk or qtparted to create the aprpopriate partitions on the
new drive.

4. Mount the C: drive from /dev/hda1 and the new drive, /dev/hdb1

5. Use rsync or cp to recursively copy the contents of the old C: drive
to the new C: drive. 

6. Recable so that the new drive is the primary master.

7. Boot the floppy. Run fdisk to see if it recognizes the new drive. 
Also run fdisk /mbr just to clean up the master boot record. 
You might also change to C: and do a dir on it just in case. 

8. Run sys on the new C: drive. 


9 Remove the floppy and boot the new hard drive. 


On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 10:42:00 -0500
Jeff Macdonald <jeff.macdonald at virtualbuilder.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm trying to upgrade my wife's laptop. She has a 10gig hd and I
> bought her a 60gig to replace it. I also got to 2.5 -> 3.5 ide
> adapters. My dual boot Win98 and Linux system sees the disks fine
> (I've removed my disks). I created a Win ME boot disk following the
> instructions at www.xxcopy.com (xcopy apparently can't copy long file
> names correctly, it creates new ones).
> 
> So C drive is old disk
> D drive is new disk
> 
> Problem 1.
> Win ME Fdisk only creates a 8 gig partition (bios sees all 60).
> 
> Fine, I boot a Knoppix CD and use cfdisk to create a valid partition
> (I select FAT32 (0B) - not FAT32 with LBA. While I'm at it I format
> the disk using mkdosfs with -F 32 -n melissa.
> 
> Problem 2.
> Back in Win ME using xxcopy - it complains about write errors after a
> few hours of operation.
> 
> Problem 3.
> Since formatting in Linux took about 30 secs (if even that), I decide
> to use Win ME to format disk. It dies at the end stating something out
> a write protect error!
> 
> I'm now testing the media by simply copying the C drive to D using
> linux. I repartitioned the HD and formatted it with ext2. I mount the
> old disk and I'm simply doing:
> 
> cd /mnt/hda1
> cp -v -a * /mnt/hdb1 
> 
> After that I may try reformatting the new drive again - this time
> using mkdosfs again and using linux again to do the copy. But I have
> doubts that this would work since I don't know how to see the short
> file names within linux.
> 
> Should I just give up and buy ghost?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Macdonald <jeff.macdonald at virtualbuilder.com>
> My birding blog:
> http://www.virtualbuilder.com/archives/cat_birding.html
> Into birding? Visit http://www.migratus.com
> 


- -- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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