I have an older Win95 system with a 4 gig drive (it only has about 1.5 gig used). I would like to simply copy the entire drive to a Folder on my XP computer. Then, if that Win95 computer ever crashed, I could format another HD (with Win95 using format x:/s) put it in the XP box, copy everything back (hidden files and all)...and that'd be it. IS this thinking correct? Again...it be for a more basic DOS based Win95 drive. I need to be as no-frills/just-straight-copy as possbile (i.e. rather not use a special ghosting program or back up program) because the program used may not even be around later/itself have complications, etc. Any advice appreciated. THANKS!

Dont see any reason why that shouldn't work. Win95 is a relativley simple OS compared to XP so ther should be no hidden gotchas. Use Xcopy to copy the files and everything should be fine. Stuart

What I'd do is if you've a spare drive, ghost the drive to the spare and then if the original went just swap the drives and your of and running again. I've used this for some older machines and I leave the spare drive in the machine but disconnect the ribbon cable so the drive can't be accessed accidentally

I doubt it would work. It won't copy your bootsector files and you may run into other problems as well. Get yourself a copy of Norton Ghost and use that to copy your hard drive.

Thanks very much, folks... I will give it try...(without Norton at first...just to see). Actually just adding another drive to the box is a great idea. I dope-slapped myself for that thinking of it to begin with. If I want to make any copies beyond that...I can work with the spare - much simpler and, most of all, safer. THANKS!

>> It won't copy your bootsector files << If you format the disk with Windows Boot disk using the /s option the boot sector is created for you along with COMMAND.COM, MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS. The remaining SYS files will be copied with Xcopy. Stuart

The partition needs to be set `Active'. That will not be done by the /s option or with the SYS command. If you use Ghost or Drive Image, they take care of everything.