WinME's secret boot code? How can I swap HDs?

[TrueSanity]

I have tried to swap out my boot hard drive with a simple file copy, but WinME will not boot off the new drive. Is there any way to install the boot code on the new drive short of reinstalling WinME on it or ghosting the drive?

[Votan]

I don't thing copy would do. Perhaps you may want to format with switch /s. The best I know this format option does not work on HD.

Another option is diskcopy but I haven't fouled around with this command, particularly with HD. If your second drive is blank, you may not loose anything if you try it.

[Ya_know]

To do what you are looking for, any of the Ghost utilites should work. Copy and Xcopy wont touch the Master Boot Record (MBR), so you would denfiately be hard pressed to get it to boot following these methods. Ghost performs sector by sector reproduction; It works with raw data bits, so in the end, it really is the same drive, baring any size variance.

There may be other options, this is the only one that I use.

[Fubarian]

or you could be really smart (and cheap) and go to the manufactor of the hard drive and get their utility that'll copy the entire partition from one to the other......

Maxtor, IBM and Western Digital all have this type of utility


oh, and uh, yea, copy works, just gotta be in safemode and NOT copy the win386.swp file and set the partition to active AFTER you've copied it.

[Sowulo]

Originally posted by Fubarian:
<STRONG>or you could be really smart (and cheap) and go to the manufactor of the hard drive and get their utility that'll copy the entire partition from one to the other......

Maxtor, IBM and Western Digital all have this type of utility


oh, and uh, yea, copy works, just gotta be in safemode and NOT copy the win386.swp file and set the partition to active AFTER you've copied it.</STRONG>

And make sure that you reset Explorer so that no files are hidden....

[Larommi]

Originally posted by TrueSanity:
<STRONG>I have tried to swap out my boot hard drive with a simple file copy, but WinME will not boot off the new drive. Is there any way to install the boot code on the new drive short of reinstalling WinME on it or ghosting the drive?</STRONG>

From safe mode I get to the run line and type xcopy32 c:\*.* x:\ /h /i /c /k /e /r /y

Gets most everything and usually the drive will boot, if it has an active partition. The most I ever had to do to get one started was sys the drive. I use this all the time. Otherwise it was already stated that drives come with utilities to copy. If not they can be found on the manufacturers web site.