DriveCopy 4.0 from PowerQuest

By Jim Weber, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group
jlweber9@mindspring.com

While recently upgrading to a new 30gig hard drive I was struck by the novel idea to migrate all my stuff from the "old" 15gig hard drive currently nestled in a drive bay and use the 30gig as my C drive. Well, you can just about imagine my joy when I was offered a copy of DriveCopy 4.0 from Power Quest for evaluation. I have used several Power Quest products over time, such as Partition Magic, and have always found them to be solid programs that performed just as I needed, but this time I had a different result. Out of the box I found Power Quest again had the novice user in mind and there was a large and well laid out "Quick Reference" poster that covered how to install the software, a new hard drive, set jumpers, and change BIOS settings. Clearly these people know the needs of their customers and are willing to put some extra effort in making them happy. I was also glad to see a real paper manual. There are far too many companies that hide manuals on the CD as a Word or PDF document. It may be a cost saver for a software firm, but it can be a real annoyance to the end user if the computer they are trying to fix is broken and the only documentation available needs a functioning computer to be viewed.

When you load DriveCopy, it doesn’t install in the classic sense. You won’t find a new application or file folder that opens within Windows. Your options are to run from the hard drive or make a boot floppy. On the next boot, DriveCopy pre-empts the boot process and loads its own operating shell in what’s called a "virtual floppy" that deletes itself when you exit. From here you can choose to do an entire disk copy, pick a specific partition, or make a back up to a new hard disk. Since I wanted to do an upgrade, I chose the "Replace" option with "check for bad sectors" and "Verify Disk Writes" checked. DriveCopy recognized both drives correctly as far as size and partition information. I clicked the "Entire Disk to Disk" copy button, then all and proceeded as I hoped. Now for the bad part. After about 5% is copied, I get an error, #49 write fault, and get kicked back to the start screen. No problem, I think. I’ll just turn off error checking and do it again. Well, all I got again was the same error message.

Since my computer was a gutted mess on my desk, this is where I was glad to have a real manual to crack open (for the first time) and see what troubleshooting help it could provide. Bad sector? Run Scan Disk and check for problems. Well, neither Scan Disk nor Norton reported any problems on my source drive. Anti-virus software running in BIOS? Nope. This system is only one year old and supports DMA 66, so there was no EZ-Drive or anything to interfere with the boot process and both drives were recognized correctly by the BIOS during boot. I even resorted to making boot floppies to avoid any corruption at the source disk. Nope, not that either. I was getting to where I saw "#49 write fault" each time I closed my eyes, kind of like staring at the sun too long. I was beginning to suspect a problem with my shiny new hard drive (which would be a tragedy beyond words). Fortunately I have a shiny new copy of Windows XP to go with my shiny new hard drive, so I did an install from the XP CD. XP did all the partitioning and formatting and installed without any problems. I haven’t noticed any errors or hang-ups on the new drive.

As I said when I started this article, I like Power Quest and its products. There is enough provided with DriveCopy 4.0 in the way of utilities and documentation to show that they aren’t scrimping on production or support. One small confession before I continue. I didn’t contact Power Quest for help. For one, my computer was in pieces and I just wanted to get things back together quickly, and, second, once I loaded XP I no longer had a spare hard drive to play with. I really don’t have any other basis of comparison with DriveCopy 4.0 until I can find someone else to try it out and see if this is a program failure or a hardware conflict. I hate sending out flame mail until I think I have my facts straight, but DriveCopy 4.0 gets two big thumbs down from me until further notice. u

Editor’s note: Jim would be happy to pass along this product to another member of the group to see if he or she can have success. And I would think that they probably will, since it would not be the successful piece of software it is if everyone had Jim’s experience.

Additionally, Tampa PC Users Group members may purchase DriveCopy 4.0 at a special price of $25 by ordering from the secure web site at http://www.ugr.com/order/. Indicate the special price code of UGEVAL01 with your order.