Cloning Win 3.11 hard drive

[pcman1919]

What is the best way to clone a WIN 3.11 hard drive?

[jdc2000]

re you planning on cloning the drive to a new (current) drive? Will it be used as an actual system drive?

[pcman1919]

I need to have a seperate hard drive to run the system in the event that the current hard drive crashes and is not useable.

[jdc2000]

Win 3.11 is ancient, as you know, and newer drives probably have some issues to consider. These include a new sector size, and most likely the drives are too large for DOS and Win 3.11.

If you can find a compatible drive, standard drive cloning software should work.

An alternative, provided you do not need the specific hardware that Win 3.11 is now running on:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/how..._31_virtual_pc

[pcman1919]

I have a second hard drive with DOS and WIN 3.11 installed already that I can use, so I know it's compatible with this vintage PC. I want to overwrite everything with an exact bit for bit copy of the original hard drive.

I need to run a lot of external hardware with all of the drivers and software that is installed on the original hard drive. This is an automated test PC that is running motor control profiles and acquiring data with Metra Byte data acquisition cards. The code is written in C.

[SpywareDr]

I've used one of these to duplicate dozens of drives, both IDE and SATA.

StarTech UNIDUPDOCK USB to IDE SATA Standalone Hard Drive Duplicator Dock - $175.99

[HAN]

I have no idea it will work on such an old machine, but if you can boot from a CD drive, take a look at Clonezilla. http://clonezilla.org/ It's free and for modern gear, very reliable.