I have a faulty hard drive. I mean faulty because Windows failed to recognize the drive, which means it's impossible for me to do backup under Windows environment. The hard drive is a Seagate 30GB hard drive. There are 2 paritions in it. I need to backup all the files in the 2nd partition, or both, if possible. I know the files are still there as I can still browse them in DOS mode. I did this by booting the system using a Windows Startup Disk or boot disk, entering the plain DOS mode. This means that the only way to do backup is to do it under plain DOS command-line environment. XCOPY works and I tried it before. The problem is, XCOPY doesn't support Long File Names, which means all the files backed up will be converted to 8.3 file name format, a real PAIN! Does anyone know anyway to copy files in plain DOS mode, which will retain the long file names? I tried XXCOPY before, and since XXCOPY cannot be run in DOS mode, I can only use XXCOPY32 but XXCOPY32 doesn't support Long File Names either! The drive went faulty all of a sudden that I couldn't get to backup my files in time. I really don't wanna lose all the files and directories in the drive, especially in the 2nd parition. Please provide help if anyone has any idea doing file transfer under plain DOS environment, which will retain the long file names. Suggestions on dealing with faulty drives are also welcome! Many thanks! Howie.

SOL. There is no way to do what you want without a special program that backs the disk image up to CD-RWs. The best way to do it, is to slave the drive on another working system and copy the files that way. XXCOPY is good for doing that, but XCOPY will work also with all the right switches set.

There is no native LFN support in DOS. Might try LFN tools, at Powerload - couldn't say how effective they would be. I seriously doubt that you have a 'faulty' hard drive if it's working just fine in DOS - likely you have a Windows problem. Can't really advise on XP, but on a Win9x system, I would suggest rerunning Windows setup to try and repair the OS. But this is XP - different HDD structure, different 'DOS' If you're just concerned with rescuing data, pull the HDD and slave it to another similar (XP) system and copy what you need.