Using linux to clone a Windows ME disk?

[Jeff Macdonald]

Just an update on my progress so far:

On Sat, 2004-01-31 at 10:42, Jeff Macdonald wrote:
> Problem 1.
> Win ME Fdisk only creates a 8 gig partition (bios sees all 60).
> 

I was able to get Win ME fdisk to see the entire disk space. Before I
was booting from a floppy emergency disk (hand made by format and
copying stuff). For some reason that fdisk was not seeing the entire
disk. This time I simply let the C drive boot (C has the original OS on
it). fdisk and format worked fine this time. Must be something about
protected mode vs real mode. After partitioning I used the windows gui
to format the drive. It too saw all the space.

Anyhow, another interesting thing is that xxcopy recommends rebooting
after formatting because windows will then enable caching on the new
drive. This does seem to make a difference.

I now have xxcopy doing a clone. Hopefully this will work (after doing a
fdisk /mbr when I make the D drive C).

Some things to note:

My original plan was to do this:

1) create a boot diskette with fdisk, format, sys and xcopy on it
2) boot from it
3) fdisk, format, sys new drive
4) xcopy old to new

This should create a nicely defragged disk. First thing I found on the
web was that xcopy has problems copying long file names. While it can do
it, it ends up renaming the short name of the file. So if you had a
directory with 3 long file names, say foo...1, foo...2, foo..3, deleted
the first one and then copied those files instead of getting foo...2 and
foo...3, you'd get foo...1 and foo...2. The contents of foo...1 and
foo..2 (the copies) is that of foo...2 and foo...3. Please note that I'm
taking shortcuts with the file names.

To make things more complicated, the registry stores the short names.

xxcopy supposedly resolves this problem. I was concerned that the linux
tools would reproduce the same problem (not confirmed).

After re-reading Jerry's suggestions, I understand that probably the
safest way is to use dd and parted to expand the partition. It would
require defragging, but every bit that needs copying would be copied. I
will try that if the xxcopy fails again.

-- 
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
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