With Windows 95 or Windows 98 copying your system to a new IDE hard drive is fairly simple.

1. Configure the new drive as a slave, and ensure your system BIOS detects the new drive. Boot to your Windows Start-up disk and run Fdisk to set the DOS partitions of the drive if necessary. Make sure you Fdisk the right drive!! If you are using a FAT 16 Windows 95 system, you may have to partition a large drive into multiple logical drives.

2. Format the new drive as a bootable drive, using the command FORMAT D:/S assuming D is the drive letter assigned to your new drive.

3. Reboot into Windows and open Windows Explorer. You should see your new drive in the directory tree.

4. Close Explorer. Right Click on your My Computer icon and select Properties. Click the Performance tab, the on the Virtual Memory button. Check the "Let me specify my Virtual Memory Settings" box and select your new hard drive from the drop-down box. Click OK, then OK again and restart Windows when prompted.

5. When Windows restarts, open Windows Explorer and ensure Win386.swp no longer exists in the root or Windows directories of your C drive. If it does delete it.

6. In Windows Explorer, delete all files in /Windows/Temp...no sense copying garbage to a new drive.

7. Clear your Temporary Internet Folder in IE or your Cache in Netscape, or both. If using Internet Mail & News or Outlook Express, compact your mail/news folders by going to File | Folder | Compact all Folders.

8. Empty your Recycle Bin.

9. Run scandisk on both your old and new hard drives, running a through surface scan on the new drive to identify any possible bad clusters.

10. Disable any virus scanner you have running, and shut down any programs you have running other than Explorer and Systray, as displayed by Task Manager. (Crtl-Alt-Del will bring up the Task Manager)

11. Defragment your current C drive.

12. In Windows Explorer, ensure your View/Folder settings are set to View All Files.

13. In Windows Explorer, highlight your C drive in the left pane so the contents of the drive are displayed in the right pane.

14. Go to Edit on the top toolbar and click Select All Files. Once the entire contents of your C drive are highlighted, click edit again and select Copy.

15. Highlight your D drive (or whatever letter was assigned to your new drive).

16. Click Edit and select Paste. Windows will now begin copying the contents of your old drive to your new drive. When the copying is complete (it may take awhile) close all windows and shut down the computer.

17. Change the jumpers on your new hard drive to make it a Master. If you plan on keeping your old drive in the machine, reconfigure it's jumpers to make it a Slave, otherwise remove it. Note: on many hard drives, if it is a single drive (no slaves attached) you don't enable the jumper as a master, but rather leave the jumpers out. Consult your drive specifications.

18. Reboot the computer using your Windows Start-up disk. Run Fdisk and ensure your new drive is set as the Active Partition.

19. Reboot into Windows. You may get warnings about your Virtual Memory path, if you no longer have a D drive. Go back into your Virtual Memory settings and modify it to reflect your desired drive location and size. You will need to reboot to reflect any changes.

20. Your system should now be completely transfered and running on the new drive when you reboot. Running Scandisk and Defragmenting the drive again would be prudent.