Cloning MS-DOS

[YoshiHDify]

Hey guys,

 

I've been trying to clone a HDD with MS-DOS installed on it with no avail. So far I've tried using Clonezilla. I am cloning from a 250GB IDE HDD to a 250GB SATA HDD if that makes any difference. However I am unable to boot off of the cloned disk, the contents appear identical however the space used is slightly off (a few mb at most). I have tried a few different options in clonezilla but all have had no success. Is there anything wrong I'm doing?

 

Some details:

- Using some ASUS motherboard with IDE/SATA port(s) so I can get the two drives connected

- The original drive boots up MS-DOS with no issues.

- I have also tried cloning to a larger size HDD (same result)

 

I'm thinking that there might be some boot files that aren't copying or maybe clonezilla formats the new drive incorrectly, the content should be exact (bit for bit copy) by the space used is different (maybe this is normal).

 

Any help in the right direction is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

Regards,

YoshiHDify

[SilicateWielder]

have you tested to see if your drive boots in dosbox? And why are you cloning a drive that big if it is for DOS? wouldn't a small partition work?

 

You could try resizing the partition to the smallest size you can possibly do, clone it to the new drive and then expand it to the full size of the drive. You can do this with a linux live-usb and Gparted.

 

it could also be a driver issue, make sure you have drivers that allow dos to run on a SATA drive. There are some 3rd party ones you can get online.

[YoshiHDify]

Might be a driver issue now that you mention it, the drive just comes up with "please insert bootable media" error when I try to boot. Thanks for these tips, ill give them all a shot.

[techguru]

Hey guys,

 

I've been trying to clone a HDD with MS-DOS installed on it with no avail. So far I've tried using Clonezilla. I am cloning from a 250GB IDE HDD to a 250GB SATA HDD if that makes any difference. However I am unable to boot off of the cloned disk, the contents appear identical however the space used is slightly off (a few mb at most). I have tried a few different options in clonezilla but all have had no success. Is there anything wrong I'm doing?

 

Some details:

- Using some ASUS motherboard with IDE/SATA port(s) so I can get the two drives connected

- The original drive boots up MS-DOS with no issues.

- I have also tried cloning to a larger size HDD (same result)

 

I'm thinking that there might be some boot files that aren't copying or maybe clonezilla formats the new drive incorrectly, the content should be exact (bit for bit copy) by the space used is different (maybe this is normal).

 

Any help in the right direction is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

Regards,

YoshiHDify

use acronis trueimage

I've used it a few times with REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY f'ing old hdds

[Blake]

Hey guys,

 

I've been trying to clone a HDD with MS-DOS installed on it with no avail. So far I've tried using Clonezilla. I am cloning from a 250GB IDE HDD to a 250GB SATA HDD if that makes any difference. However I am unable to boot off of the cloned disk, the contents appear identical however the space used is slightly off (a few mb at most). I have tried a few different options in clonezilla but all have had no success. Is there anything wrong I'm doing?

 

Some details:

- Using some ASUS motherboard with IDE/SATA port(s) so I can get the two drives connected

- The original drive boots up MS-DOS with no issues.

- I have also tried cloning to a larger size HDD (same result)

 

I'm thinking that there might be some boot files that aren't copying or maybe clonezilla formats the new drive incorrectly, the content should be exact (bit for bit copy) by the space used is different (maybe this is normal).

 

Any help in the right direction is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

Regards,

YoshiHDify

What are you selecting to clone? the partition or the drive?

If it is the partition, this is expected (it's got nothing telling it how to boot).

If it is the drive, make sure the boot partition is on it. if it isn't you are going to need to boot from a recovery disk and tell it to fix the bootsector. Can't tell you the commands off the top of my head as I haven't needed to deal with DOS in 5+ years and never again.

 

Get hiren's boot cd and just use ghost to do a sector based image and restore it to the new drive.

 

Could also be the sata ports are disabled? check that in the bios and confirm that the motherboard is configured to boot from SATA first.