Cloning a hard drive, how to do it?

[Randy]

Hi all, I have several hard drives that came with my STs, etc., that I want to clone the contents of.  Really, I want the cloned copy onto an SD card so I can plug the card into the US and start up my Mega STe with that card as my drive.  As I have several drives with contents specific to a computer (Mega STe, TT and Falcon coming), I would like to be able to start up my Mega STe, etc. with the same system and contents on a card as what was on the hard drive.  For the first one on my Mega STe, its has a 120 MB drive with 6 partitions with numerous zipped files so I would prefer to have partitions on the SD card 512 MB so I can also unzip files to use/inspect them.  Of course, I would like the card to be used in my US and be an exact bootup for the replaced hard drive.  Thanks for your help!

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Cloning would be to create image file of whole drive, and copy it to other disk/Flash card.  But as you self wrote, it is better that copy has larger partitions. And I guess, can have more of them, if card capacity is larger - like 4 or more GB.

So, all you need to do is to partition SD cards with minimum so much partitions as on source. And then just copy everything from first partition of source disk to first partition of target - what would be  I:   if you do with Atari, and there are 6 partitions (Mega STE 120 MB drive).

Thing can be done with PC too, but then will need PCI SCSI card. And since those disks are most likely not with DOS compatible partitions  need special SW to copy files from source to PC. And then from it to SD card partitions ...

Since capacities are small, maybe is better idea to make image of whole disk, then using it in emulator, where can copy files to PC drive ...

Copy with Atari seems as simplest, but question is: will old drives and UltraSatan work together ? Of course it is faster on PC, but copying couple hundreds of MB will not take so long.

[Randy]

9 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Cloning would be to create image file of whole drive, and copy it to other disk/Flash card.  But as you self wrote, it is better that copy has larger partitions. And I guess, can have more of them, if card capacity is larger - like 4 or more GB.

So, all you need to do is to partition SD cards with minimum so much partitions as on source. And then just copy everything from first partition of source disk to first partition of target - what would be  I:   if you do with Atari, and there are 6 partitions (Mega STE 120 MB drive).

Thing can be done with PC too, but then will need PCI SCSI card. And since those disks are most likely not with DOS compatible partitions  need special SW to copy files from source to PC. And then from it to SD card partitions ...

Since capacities are small, maybe is better idea to make image of whole disk, then using it in emulator, where can copy files to PC drive ...

Copy with Atari seems as simplest, but question is: will old drives and UltraSatan work together ? Of course it is faster on PC, but copying couple hundreds of MB will not take so long.

 

Thanks Peter, that was what I was thinking as well, creating 6 512meg partitions on SD card and connect the US to the ASCI and copy each partition from the hard drive over to the SD card.  One question please, how can I display more than 6 (C-H) on my desktop?  I made more partitions on my current SD card than 6 but only 6 showed up on the desktop.  Thanks!

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I made a promise that will never again answer on questions about how to display more partitions (drive icons) on Desktop. That was answered so many times, and is so 'just try out all those menu items in Desktop menu' type.  Plus, it is answered on my site, on page for beginners.

[Randy]

13 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I made a promise that will never again answer on questions about how to display more partitions (drive icons) on Desktop. That was answered so many times, and is so 'just try out all those menu items in Desktop menu' type.  Plus, it is answered on my site, on page for beginners.

I'll check that on you webpage, I actually have that up but have not read all of it yet.