ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Re: Computers and the Internet Moving Computer Data

I know you computer folks will snicker at my dumb question but here goes.

I have 2 hard drives in my PC (C and D)
I closed out my books and files for 2004 on drive C and would like to copy all of the files to drive D as a backup. Trouble is I can not figure out how to do that.

Can any one point me in the right direction? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

From Windows:

1. Open a window showing the root of drive C:
2. Open a second window on the desktop showing the root of drive D:
3. Make sure that the drive C: window is active, and hit Ctrl-A to mark all files and subdirectories (or be more selective by holding down Ctrl and clicking each entry you want to copy).
4. Right-click the mouse, and select Copy.
5. Move over to the window showing D: and click to make it active.
6. Right-click on the D: window and select Paste.

From the DOS prompt:
To copy the entire contents of C: to D:, issue the command

XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /S

You can be more selective with filenames if you wish. The /S switch means to include all subdirectories.

Other options are available, depending upon the version. Enter the command XCOPY /? to see a help list.

Thanks very much Paul. However, ya gotta understand my level of ignorance. How do I do items one and two in your description.
Thanks

From the Windows desktop, double-click "My computer." Among the icons which are then displayed you should see one for each of your disk drives (floppy drive A, hard disk C, etc.)

Double-click the appropriate drive and you should get a window showing the contents of that disk.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-07-2005).]

Thanks Paul, I was stuck on having two windows open. I just minimized one and all went well...Doh!

Thanks again, Kent

You're welcome!

Just in case you hadn't realized, you can actually resize a window by moving the cursor onto any one of the four edges (the cursor will change shape), then holding the left mouse button down while you expand or shrink the window. If you click-&-hold on the title bar of the window, you can drag it to any position on the screen.

By sizing and positioning two windows that way you can get them both on screen simultaneously without overlap -- Handy if you want to use "drag & drop" to move files from one to the other rather than copy.

Personally, I just drop to DOS for file operations like that as I find it much easier and quicker, but that's just what I grew up with I guess.

Paul,

Good job on the explanation(s) for file archiving tasks!!!

Scott35

BTW if you are really trying to clone a drive with DOS use
XCOPY C: D: /s/h/e/r/c
Those switches say
/s copy subdirectories
/h copy hidden files
/e copy empty directories
/r copy read only files
/c continue after errors (important since the swap file will fail every time)

BTW there is a possibility of problems with short file names but I have done this many times without a glitch.
There are also many cloning software programs and one is usually bundled in the disk that comes with a new drive.