New twist on drive copy - Win - Win using Linux to stage?

[A Duston]

Monty Harder wrote:
> 
> Brian Densmore <DensmoreB at ctbsonline.com> said:
> 
> > If you want to be able to boot you would have to copy the 
> > file system as a whole.  The dd function might work for that. 
> > There might also be some
> 
>   No, you don't. A Win98 FAT filesystem that has been copied 
> file-for-file only needs the boot sector installed correctly 
> to be able to be bootable.   And as long as you've preserved 
> LFNs, nothing should break at all.

And there's the rub.  That is not quite as easy, as it might at 
first seem.  This is because the 8.3 name is _still_ a files 
"real" name.  The LFN is _still_ kludged in.  The are related in 
a way, that most tools that I have heard of don't necessarily 
keep together correctly.  Consider the following scenario:

1. create a file named "a_long_file_name_a.txt" in an empty 
   directory.  This file will have the short name of 
   "a_long~1.txt".
2. create a file named "a_long_file_name_b.txt" in the same
   directory.  This file will have the short name of 
   "a_long~2.txt".
3. delete the file named "a_long_file_name_a.txt"
4. Now copy the file "a_long_file_name_b.txt" to empty 
   directory. This file will have the short name of 
   "a_long~1.txt".
   Notice that the short name is different!
5. Copy the file "a_long~2.txt"" to another empty directory.
   This file will have a short name of "a_long~1.txt" and a 
   long name of "a_long_file_name_b.txt".  Notice that the 
   short name is not even the same as the one you typed!

I have just verified this on my wife's Win98 box with both 
the MS-DOS Prompt, and Windows Explorer.  You might not think 
this is a big deal, but half the stuff in the registery still 
stores the short name, so when it changes, things will break.

Do any recent copying/backup/archival tools maintain the 
long/short file name relationship correctly?  Of course the 
fact that you need a special utility to copy a file, and the 
copy command doesn't work correctly, well . . .

Hal Duston
hald at sound.net