"Timothy Daniels" wrote in message
. ..
asled:
Is there a nice simple DOS program that I can run that
will format the new drive, copy the old to the new, and
make the new drive bootable?

Yes! And it's free for 30 days. It's called Casper XP.
www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp. I've used half
a dozen other cloning utilities, and for cloning (as opposed
to image files and incrmental backups) it's the best and
the easiest to use. It will copy the MBR to the new drive,
it will mark the new paritition "active" (if only one partition
is being cloned), and the new partition will be as bootable
as the one cloned. Casper can be made to clone in either
of 2 modes - the entirety of one HD can be cloned to the
entirety of another HD, or just one partition can be cloned
to another HD which may or may not already have other
partitions on it. (True Image cannot do the latter.)

As with all cloning, disconnect the old drive before
starting up the clone OS for the first time. The clone
may be *seen* by the old OS before the clone is
first started up, but the clone must not see the old OS
until after it has undergone its first startup. Thereafter,
at subsequent startups, the clone may see its "parent"
OS without problems.

*TimDaniels*


Tim later adds...
Sorry, Casper XP does not run under DOS, but that
matters not a whit - it will copy everything while running
under WinXP, including the wretched Symantec anti-virus
software with all its settings and its subscription life span.
Just disconnect the PC from the internet and disable the
AV off before cloning to be sure.

*TimDaniels*


wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks for the reply. I'm trying True Image right now, but don't know
how to make a bootable CD with the utilites in linux. I saw a part of
the program for making bootable recovery cd/dvd's but I'm sure that's
different. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks again.


Steve:
We're talking *direct* disk-to-disk cloning here, right?

In addition to Tim's recommendation re the Casper XP program, let me offer
the following...

If you're primarily interested in using a disk cloning program with either a
bootable floppy disk or bootable CD as the media to carry out the cloning
operation, you may be interested in Symantec's Norton Ghost 2003 program.
Its simplicity of use in performing direct disk-to-disk cloning operations,
together with its portability aspects make it a very appealing program for
many of us. While that program has been presumably superseded by the Ghost 9
& 10 versions, we find the 2003 version easier to use than those later
programs and just as effective in an XP environment. The 2003 version is
still available from a number of online vendors for very reasonable cost
(either as a CD or download). If you're interested I'll provide you with the
URLs of a number of those vendors. Also, I recently prepared step-by-step
instructions for using the Ghost 2003 program (via the bootable floppy
disk/CD) so if you, or others are interested in this I'll post them.

As to the Acronis True Image program...
It's also a nice program for *direct* disk-to-disk cloning operations. While
you can't prepare a bootable floppy disk as you can with the Ghost 2003
program, you can easily create a bootable CD to carry out the cloning
operation. You do this from within the program itself; you don't need any
third-party program to do so. You also have the opportunity to create the
bootable CD when you first install the program on your PC.

I also prepared step-by-step instructions for using the ATI program (version
8) (using the bootable CD) so if you're interested I'll post them as well.
Anna