Copy one drive onto another in MSDOS

MonkeyKong007

I can no longer get into windows. i have tried doing a repair install etc.

Before i format my main drive and start again can I copy all the files on it onto my other drive? There is def enough room... i just dont know how to do it!

Cheers peeps

albertross_2

you can do it with a dos bootdisk, and ntfsdos, and xcopy.
https://www.bootdisk.com (it will mess up all the long filenames though).

Or you create a bartpe bootCD, on another machine, and then boot from it, into a windows gui, and copy and paste.

what is the error on the machine, what happens when you boot?

MonkeyKong007

i changed the motherboard and have tried to do a reinstall.. it doesnt seem to recognise that windows is still on one of my hard drives so i cant do a repair.

i havent got access to another machine so bootdisk.com is a good option?

Cheers

MonkeyKong007

Can someone guide me through this?

I cant get into windows xp i just get the blue screen of death. So i start my computer and get into MS DOS

If i want to copy files from C Drive to E Drive, (and not overwrite files on E Drive) what do i type in?

I have found this

"Similar to most MS-DOS commands, XCOPY uses options, or switches, to control the way it works. To use XCOPY, you'll need to open a copy of MS-DOS. At the DOS prompt, type cd/ and press ENTER to display the C:> prompt. (The command "cd" stands for "change directory.")

Now type C:>xcopy d:\*.* c:\/s/e/h/k/c/i/r to copy the data from the old drive (which has been renamed D) to the new master drive (which is now C). XCOPY will make a duplicate copy of a file at one location (the drive) and store it at another location (the C: drive). The asterisks (*.*) tell XCOPY to duplicate and archive every file regardless of its name or extension."


So i should type "xcopy c:\*.* e:\/s/e/h/k/c/i/r" to achieve what i want?

What do all those letters mean? namely "/s/e/h/k/c/i/r"

thanks

to copy from one c to e, but i dont understand what " /h /i /c /k /e /r /y" is about.

albertross_2

ntfsdos
md e:\backup1
xcopy c:\ e:\backup1 /s/e/h/c should do it.

crox

Silly question, have you put the drives in the right way round? Not sure it matters anymore, but might it just be a case of switching the boot drives round in the bios?

cwoodham

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/xcopy.mspx?mfr=true

This explains the xcopy parameters.

albertross is right. xcopy works FROM one drive TO another drive. So you tell it the FROM drive (c drive) first.

MonkeyKong007

ace thanks guys. Really helpful.

Is there any difference between invoking MS DOS using either the windows xp cd or a boot diskette?

Will Xcopy work if i opt for doing this all through the recovery console?

esuhl

You could make a parallel installation of Windows - just install it to a different partition or change the installation directory from WINDOWS to, say, WINTEMP.

You should then be able to boot into your new, clean version of Windows, copy files or do whatever you need to do, then format the hard disk containing Windows and re-install.

It'll be a lot quicker to use xcopy, but I know some people are just more comfortable using the Windows GUI.

MonkeyKong007

esuhl wrote: »

You could make a parallel installation of Windows - just install it to a different partition or change the installation directory from WINDOWS to, say, WINTEMP.

You should then be able to boot into your new, clean version of Windows, copy files or do whatever you need to do, then format the hard disk containing Windows and re-install.

It'll be a lot quicker to use xcopy, but I know some people are just more comfortable using the Windows GUI.

hey thanks for the advise... yeh i thought of that but all the partions of my drive are taken... the biggest unpartioned space is 8mb

esuhl

You could use another PC to create a BartPE CD (a Windows installation that boots and runs from the CD without installing files to the hard disk).

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/