Copying Hard Drives
DISCLAIMER: These instructions are rather technical -
if you aren't fairly comfortable with computer hardware, FIND SOMEONE THAT IS.
You could wipe out your computer hard drive, or the drive you are trying to copy
from. So don't come crying to me....
For a nominal fee (my rates are $65 hour, 1 hour minimum) I will copy a drive
for you, plus the cost of a drive unless you supply it.
I've been asked by a number of other operators for instructions on copying hard drives from coin-operated amusement equipment. I have heard of distributors charging $500+ for a $100 drive and about 10 minutes of work. I copy hard drives almost on a daily basis, mostly for Golden Tee Fore 2003 and Big Buck Hunter. Consequently I have my office PC setup to allow this easily.
I have also archived "image files" of almost all our hard drive based games. I have a hard drive in my PC dedicated to this. It is far easier to load a drive from an image file stored on a PC, than to pull the hard drive from a, say, working GT4 and copying it. That game you need a copy from might be hours away, quietly earning you money. No point taking it down to copy the hard drive.
My office PC has two hard drives in it. The main drive (IDE channel one, set as MASTER) with the operating system on it (Windows 2000) is formatted as NTFS. I have a second 40GB drive (IDE channel one, set as SLAVE), formatted as FAT32, that I store both the image files and my hard drive copying utilities, most importantly a program called DOLLY. When I want to copy a drive, I do a restart on my computer, and reboot the computer with a boot disk (which you can create with DOS, Windows 98, etc.) This is important, as DOLLY won't run in a 32 bit environment (XP, 2000, 98, etc.) It must be from DOS. Since my main drive is NTFS, when I boot from a floppy, DOS can't see the main drive - it sees the slave FAT32 drive as drive C: The drive I am copying to (or from) is connected to a power cable and an IDE cable connected to IDE channel two, which I have hanging out the front of my computer.
Step 1
You will require the DOLLY program, available for download by clicking
here.
It is available for use free for 30 days. Strangely enough, after 30 days and it
won't work any more, if you delete the DOLLY.LIC file it seems to work for
another 30 days. Funny, that...
Step 2
You will require a boot disk, created with DOS or Windows 98. The DOLLY
program can either be on that disk, or stored on a FAT or FAT32 partition on
your hard drive.
Step 3
With your PC off, attach the hard drive you want to copy to/from to the IDE
connector and power. I use IDE channel two, with nothing else on it, so I don't
have to worry about MASTER/SLAVE jumpers at all.
Step 4
Boot to the startup/floppy disk. Go to whatever drive you have DOLLY stored
on, and run the program. It will ask you a bunch of questions - type in whatever
you want. It is now licensed for 30 days use.
DOLLY references hard drives using the following
conventions:
IDE channel 1, MASTER -> XHD128:
IDE channel 1, SLAVE -> XHD129:
IDE channel 2, MASTER -> XHD130:
IDE channel 2, SLAVE -> XHD131:
Therefore, with my computer setup as I described above,
the drive I store my images to is XHD129:
The drive I copy these images to or from is XHD130:
Here is an example: I have a GT4 drive attached that I want to copy an image
file to my image storage hard drive. I boot to the floppy disk, go to C: drive
(which is my image storage drive, and where I have my DOLLY program at) and type
the following:
DOLLY XHD130: GT4.IMG
It then starts copying the contents of my GT4 drive onto my image storage drive.
You will get an error message if you use the above syntax, however the
created image file will work. See Note A below.
Another example: I have a hard drive attached, and I want to create a GT4 drive
from an image file. I boot to the floppy disk, go to C: drive (which is my image
storage drive, and where I have my DOLLY program at) and type the following:
DOLLY GT4.IMG XHD130:
It then starts copying from the image file to my new GT4 hard drive.
NOTES
Sounds simple enough, huh? There are a few things you have to watch out for:
A) DOS and/or DOLLY doesn't like image files large than 2GB. The copy
process will barf out with an error message. Therefore in the first example
above, as I stated, when DOLLY hits 2GB it will give you an error message.
However, as both GT4 and Big Buck Hunter use only about 2GB, this is fine. The
resulting image file does work.
B) With drives that are raw data (like Rush the
Rock, etc.) that have no partitions, so you can't use FDISK to see how big the
partitions are, then you must copy the entire drive. As I stated in Note A,
DOLLY will error if you try and create an image file larger than 2GB. Therefore,
use syntax similar to this:
DOLLY XHD130: *.IMG /m1200000
If you read the syntax rules for DOLLY (see end of this article) then what
the above does, is reads the entirety of the drive, and create multiple images
files starting with 0.img and up, of 650MB in size. You can adjust the size to
whatever you want - 650MB file would be great for burning to CD, and storing
offline.
To create a drive from the above images files you would use the following
syntax:
DOLLY *.IMG XHD130:
C) Drive to drive copies - to copy from one hard drive to another, use the
following syntax:
DOLLY XHD130: XHD131:
Explanation: the above syntax would copy the contents of IDE channel 2,
MASTER drive to IDE channel 2, SLAVE drive.
D) What drives to use? I try to use Western Digital drives,
successfully with sizes from 10GB right up to 80GB with IT machines (GT4 and BBH,
BBH-SC,BBH2). I have also used Maxtor and Fujitsu drives. I couldn't get Seagate
drives to work. Cheapest drives I have found to date were at Radio Shack - they
had some 20GB WD drives for $100. Normally I buy them from Futureshop if I am
rushed, or from a computer parts distributor in Ontario if I have some lead time
or just needs spares.
Other games (i.e. Area 51, Police Trainer) seem finicky with certain drives.
I believe these require drives smaller than 2GB. Thankfully I have had to deal
with this only once.
Merit countertops can also be copied and archived EXCEPT the Platinum. I
believe Merit used special drives in this model, with a hardware signature on
the drive, that won't let you use off-the-shelf drives.
E) Here is the syntax for the DOLLY program:
DOLLY is a utility for copying and cloning hard drives.
FORMAT: DOLLY <SOURCE> <TARGET> [/OPTIONS] PARAMETERS (SOURCE or
TARGET):<dos-style file name>
HDn:[<sector range>] | HD/FD access < 8 GB
XHDn:[<sector range>] HD access > 8 GB
n: 0 | 1 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133
sector range: n-m | n- | -m n,m are sector numbers
OPTIONS:
/I Ignore Errors
/Mn Generate files containing max n sectors
/Rn Retry n times
/Y Do not ask for user's confirmation
/C Clone mode
sector range: n-m | n- | -m n,m are sector numbers
EXAMPLE: DOLLY HD128: d:\0.img
Read all sectors from the first hard drive (128) and
write the results into file d:\0.img.
EXAMPLE: DOLLY HD128:0-1000000 d:\0.img /i
Read sector 0 to 1000000 from first hard drive (128) and
write the results into file d:\0.img. Do not stop on error.
EXAMPLE: DOLLY HD128: d:\*.img /m100000
Read all sectors from the first hard drive (128) and
write the results into files d:\0.img, d:\100000.img,...
The create files have a size of 100000 sectors each (=50MB)
EXAMPLE: DOLLY HD128: XHD129:
Read all sectors from the first hard drive (128) and
write the results to the second hard drive (129). Access
HD 129 via BIOS INT13 extentions.
EXAMPLE: DOLLY HD128: HD129: /c
Read all sectors from the first hard drive (128) and
write the results to the second hard drive (129). Use
cloning mode to make HD 129 bootable.