Help!!! My hard drive is going bad on my laptop and I can't run windows. I can access data via my boot disk however. I need to copy some files onto a zip disk. Can anyone give me a crash course in using XCOPY in DOS?

Check this post out. It is very closely related to your own problem (and has a how-to for xcopy...of sorts). http://computing.net/dos/wwwboard/forum/5389.html

One thing you need to be aware of if you are running Windows 95 or later on the laptop. Xcopy in DOS will not save long file names. It is easy to use. To save the whole C: drive--presumably through a printer type cable using interlnk--enter: XCOPY C: D: /S. Do not forget the /S switch because it means to copy the subdirectories and the files in them. If you think you are going to use floppy disks, the task will be daunting. You may as well stick with COPY for that. Save a few files at a time.

Add /e to that command line if you have any empty directories in your tree. We all have ran in to programs that require empty diretories to run, and if they are not there, well... If DOS's Xcopy, has a /c option use it as well, (i don't have reference in front of me and I don't feel like looking it up on the web) that will tell XCOPY to conginue even if it can't read a flie for copying, say a TSR has it open & locked.

To copy long file name files, you need to use xxcopy: http://www.datman.com/xxcopy.htm There's two files you can get from this site. xxcopy16 works in DOS mode from a command prompt. xxcopy.exe is the Windows version of the software. I use xxcopy16.exe all the time to preserve Win95 long file names when copying in DOS mode.