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Drive Copy 4.0

And then there were two! Dave Cook upgrades his hard drive using Virtual Floppy technology.

 By and large, installing a second hard drive to your system should be a fairly straightforward task. The biggest challenge usually involves keeping your data, software, and partitions intact as you transfer everything onto the new drive. At best, it’s a fiddly task. Even computer experts occasionally find disk copying to be tricky and time-consuming.

 This is where PowerQuest’s DriveCopy 4.0 can come in handy. DriveCopy 4.0 lets you copy the entire contents - or even just a selected partition - from your old hard drive onto a new one. For example, it can copy everything stored on one hard drive, including the file allocation table and other system areas, and then convert this information into a form that’s suitable on a second hard drive.

Take Two

This has two benefits. For a start you can shift your whole setup to the new (and usually larger capacity) drive without having to reinstall programs, data, or restore system settings and so forth. Secondly, if the old drive is currently formatted with several different partitions, DriveCopy 4.0 can maintain these partitions while resizing them to suit the new disk. You either choose to select the various sizes, or you simply allow DriveCopy 4.0 to resize them proportionately. 

Basically, though, it’s the new Virtual Floppy technology that sets DriveCopy 4.0 apart from earlier versions. Virtual Floppy support means that you no longer need to create boot disks before drive copying takes place, thus providing you with the opportunity to speed up the upgrade process.

As good as it is, though, Virtual Floppy technology isn’t the answer to every upgrade. If needed, the program still provides the option to create boot disks. This could be, for example, when a computer is using drive overlay software (typically, Disk Manager or EZ-Drive) in order to combat a system’s outdated BIOS.

Importantly, DriveCopy 4.0 helps you to avoid a common “gotcha” in that it allows you to hide either the source or the destination partition after copying is complete. This stops the operating system on the master primary drive from becoming corrupt when rebooting the machine for the first time, later. 

Undemanding

To use Drive Copy you need to be running Windows 95/98, Me, NT 4.0 Workstation, 2000 Professional, Linux or DOS  (Linux and 16-bit operating systems require DOS). Unfortunately, DriveCopy 4.0 does not work on Windows Servers. It is, however, fairly undemanding software, since it will run on an Intel/386 SX compatible (or higher), fitted with 16MB RAM (32MB required for FAT32 or NTFS), and a CD-ROM drive. 

PowerQuest claim that Drive Copy 4.0 requires a mere 10 steps to copy the contents of one drive over to another. And as if to prove the point, a useful poster is provided that describes the process in a simple, yet informative manner. There’s also a useful partition table editor, along with an excellent user guide, and online manual.

Compared to using more traditional disk copying methods, DriveCopy 4.0 differs in one major area – it sports a graphical user interface. With both the program and the new drive installed to the system, you’re offered three options: whether to verify disk configuration (recommended), to copy the entire contents of one drive to another, or to selectively copy individual partitions to a different (or same) hard drive.

Does It Work?

Finally, we put DriveCopy 4.0 to the test by transferring the contents of a moderately-full 15GB IDE hard drive - containing three partitions - onto a 20GB IDE hard drive. The results were excellent, with DriveCopy 4.0 completing the process considerably faster than earlier versions, largely thanks to its new Virtual Floppy capabilities.

Dave Cook