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Not too long ago, someone asked about methods to migrate their Thinkpad's
Win95 setup from one harddisk to another, presumably because they were
upgrading to a large drive. Laplink was mentioned as were a few other ideas.
Here's something I tried this past weekend and it appears to have worked
surprisingly well (considering Win95 was involved!). I did this to move a
disk setup containing DOS/Win31 & Win95 (installed in separate directories
with multiboot capability) from a 540MB to an 810MB disk. (This disk did NOT
have OS/2 installed, nor were any partitions compressed whatsoever.)
1. With Win95 running, I grabbed doslfn10.zip from SimTel PC archives. This
was the key to my even undertaking this exercise since Win95-based backup
packages still scare me to death. doslfnbk seems to know how to back up
and restore Win95 long file names, saving them to a nice simple file.
Using it offered me several significant benefits:
- I can boot my old Emergency/Backup disk from DOS 6/Win 31 to perform
the backup/restore.
- I can use my 'ol reliable already-paid-for DOS-based backup utility
that knows all about SCSI backup devices (disk/tape/...), or even
such staples as good 'ol pkzip 2.04g.
- I don't have any trouble loading the SCSI drivers for my parallel-port
SCSI adapter which Win95 pukes on.
- I don't have to load *any* software on the new hard drive just to do
the restore. This saves a *lot* of floppy swapping for such ilk, since
I'd normally have to load: DOS 5, DOS 6.22 upgrade, Win31, Win95
upgrade, topped off with still-buggy Win95 backup software. What
kinda drugs is Microsoft on that they expect users to do this? No
wonder Win95 ain't catchin' on in corporate circles!
- doslfnbk is based on an approach Microsoft has "blessed" by their
providing a similar lfnbk tool on the retail Win95 CD. doslfnbk is
much easier to use than Microsoft's tool, which requires finagling
with Win95 registry settings before backing up LFN's and after
restoring them. doslfnbk also runs on pre-Win95 versions of DOS.
I heard about this tool through a local users group rag (BCS PC Report,
current issue) and found it by searching for "doslfn10.zip" using DEC's
blazingly fast Web search tool (http://altavista.digital.com), but don't
recall the URLs of the file itself).
I unzip'd & install doslfnbk.exe on my existing harddisk in C:\ and read
it readme.txt documentation.
2. I reread doslfnbk's readme.txt file, memorizing it.
3. I probably should have backed up my registry and emptied my Recycle Bin
in preparation for the backup, but didn't. Not doing the latter caused
some minor but easily recoverable problems later on (see step 12).
4. I rebooted Win95 to DOS mode (Command Prompt). Ran doslfnbk per the
instructions on each of my logical partitions on my harddrive (I had
partitioned it into large C: and small D: thinking someday I might want
to compress C: while still having some uncompressed space available on
D:).
5. I booted my 'ol DOS/Win31 Emergency Boot Disk which contained my old
reliable backup software: the simplistic TMATE II that came bundled with
my Trantor parallel-port SCSI adapter. I then proceeded to back up both
my C: and D: partitions to an Exabyte 8mm SCSI tape drive.
If I had a SCSI disk with enough space handy, I probably could have chosen
to back up to disk using pkzip 2.04g or Win95's xcopy (for the latter,
you'll have to boot from Win95 Emergency disk instead, since I'm pretty
sure earlier versions of xcopy don't handle hidden/system files well). I
think command lines for using either of these would look something like
the following (but did not test):
pkzip -r -p -whs e:\c-backup.zip c:\*.*
or xcopy c:\*.* /s /e /h /k e:\c-backup.dir
^^^^^--include hidden/sys files & preserve attribs
Laplink (older non-Win95-compatible version) would probably work well here
too, assuming it can copy hidden/system files. (I've never used this
product.)
By booting from floppy to simplistic DOS mode, I avoided issues of turning
off/on virtual memory (to prevent corrupting swap file) or having to deal
with file sharing violations, etc.
6. I had a nice breakfast while the backup meandered along. 500 MB took
about 45 minutes, I think. My SCSI adapter doesn't go into EPP mode
despite all my attempts to configure my 'pad's port for EPP, so it's
throttled to around 200 KB/sec throughput in bidirectional mode (sigh!).
7. I shut down & installed new (810 MB) hard drive.
8. I booted Win95 Emergency Disk and used fdisk to set up large C: and small
D: partitions the way I wanted, and "activated" C: for boot. (If you
don't "activate" a partition, you'll got BIOS error I999305 when you try
to boot from the new drive...a lesson I learned my first pass through this
procedure :-)
I then used format to format both C: and D: for DOS file system. For C:,
I used format's /s option, even though I expected the restore to replace
the files copied over: command.com, io.sys, msdos.sys, and drvspace.bin.
I don't know if I could have done this with an older DOS' fdisk/format,
but decided not to take the chance. Anyone know if Win95 installs its
own boot blocks code different from previous versions of DOS? I suspect
it does, but don't know for sure.
9. I booted my 'ol DOS/WIN31 Emergency Boot disk and restored C: and D: from
my backup. I let it replace the system files that had been copied over
by the format /s to C:. This seemed prudent particularly since I couldn't
remember whether the backed up versions were left from a previous multiboot
to old DOS/Win31 or Win95. (Multiboot keeps Win31 and Win95 versions of
each of these, renaming them as needed depending in which flavor to boot;
if I'd last booted my old disk to DOS/Win31, then leaving these alone on
the new disk would imply my old DOS was Win95's not DOS6/Win31--who knows
what Win95 would do with that!)
If I'd used pkzip or xcopy, I probably would have tried the following to
restore C:
pkunzip -d -Jhrs e:\c-backup.zip
or xcopy e:\c-backup.dir\*.* /s /e /h /k c:\
and answered "Yes" to any prompts about overwriting existing files.
If it complained it couldn't or wouldn't replace the hidden/system files
previously installed by the format /s, I'd probably attrib them so they
could be deleted, delete them, and restart the restore.
10. I ran doslfnbk to restore my long file names, per the instructions. I
did this while still booted on my DOS/Win31 disk which doesn't seem to
support the lock or unlock commands mentioned in doslfnbk's readme. But
given that I was booted to old DOS, not doing multitasking, essentially
no TSRs, no network, and not running Win95, I didn't think this was a big
deal, and it didn't turn out to be one.
11. I removed boot floppy from floppy drive and rebooted to new harddisk.
I chose to boot to Win95 >>Safe Mode<<. (My MSDOS.SYS has bootmenu=1,
but if it didn't, I would have hit F8 just after the "Starting Windows
95..." message appeared to get the menu and select >>Safe Mode<<.)
12. I ran scandisk and jotted down the things it found. It complained about
my C: Recycle Bin being corrupted by apparent bad long filenames, but
scandisk was able to repair this such that the problem did not reappear in
subsequent scandisk runs. This may have exposed a bug in doslfnbk, or
perhaps I should not have run doslfnbk from Win95 Command Prompt boot, but
from older DOS boot. At any rate, it's highly likely the problem could
have been avoided by emptying the Recycle Bin in Step 3 before doing the
backup. scandisk had no troubles with LFN's in any other place, and I had
over 4000 of 'em. To be safe, I also decided to empty the Recycle Bin
after scandisk had fixed it...that worked without a hitch.
13. I rebooted to full Win95 and have been working fine since.
14. In the event things hadn't work out (they didn't my first attempt because
I forgot to activate C: in step 8), I had at least the following:
- My old disk which still works just fine. I deleted the backup.lfn files
that doslfnbk created to avoid accidentally attempting to restore them
unnecessarily on this drive.
- A backup of my old drive which proved useful for my 2nd successful
attempt.
Hopefully this experience is of benefit to someone out there. It certainly
was to me! Don't forget the standard disclaimer...your mileage may vary!
..Don Markuson
dmarkuson@peritus.com