Drive copy file type

I and a fellow classic computer enthusiast have two identical gateway 2000 destinations machines. His machine had a dead hdd and needs a replacement OS. The destination uses 100% proprietary hardware and will not function with regular windows 95 or 98.

I would like to make an entire copy of the windows 95 drive in my machine and send it to him. I'm wondering what the best method for that would be. I have copied drives directly to eachother before. However , I haven't copied a drive into a fyle type that is sendable before. Would it be an iso type file? The hard drives in these machine are a very small 4 or 5 gb.

what OS are you wanting to use for the file transfer?

linux you can just use DD

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if i could just do it with the actual machine that'd work

dd would make an exact copy down to the bit, prolly not what you'd want to send your friend?

well I'm used to just sticking some sort of bootable media in and copying disks like that , but essentially yes I'd like the entire drive to just be duplicated in some sort of file

http://clonezilla.org/

Would that do what you want?

For reference, you do this:

http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image

Your friend does this:

http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image

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ok that didnt work. it seems like it cloned the drive but it's just giving an error when trying to write it back onto a diferent drive

whats the error?

failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': input/output error

It's a long error but it mentions softraid being a problem or the ntfs file system being bad and a bunch of other stuff I know is probably fine.

Is there any better software than this? this seems really primitive in the sense that it's like , all command line

What kind of drive are you outputting to?
Are you sure you're outputting to the correct device? use fdisk -l in the command line to check you're getting the right drive.

Define better. If you want a GUI try Easus. Acronis True Image is another. Norton Ghost is also another. AFAIK anything gui based is going to be a pay for solution though.

I have no experience with any of these so someone more adept with this stuff will probably have to help.

EDIT: googling around I found this, which seems to apply here. The problem appears to be with the windows install on the drive. I would recommend using a clean/blank drive for restoring to.