Copying & backup

[ConradBhart]

I am trying to back up my Amigas and would appreciate some advice.

My systems:
1: A1200 + internal 120mb IDE HD, Wizard 68040 accelerator & 32mb ram. Squirrel connected to a Powerstation - with SCSI CD drive (2x I think) and 160MB hard drive.

2: A1200 + internal 4GB CF card, Hawk 8mb ram expansion.

I thought one way might be to get an AmigaKit CF drive and take the CF card out of its holder and plug it in a PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer device in my PCMCIA port and copy my hard drive onto it. So, in an emergency I could just plug my back-up straight into my machine and be ready to go without any fuss.

Would this way of copying work ok? If I just drag the entire contents of my main drive onto a CF card can I  boot from it or do I need any special copying software.

Also I have read of incompatibilities with certain accelerators/ram boards, particularly my Hawk board. Does anyone have a Hawk. Is it compatible with a PCMCIA device?

Finally, is this the best way of doing this or am I missing something more obvious?

Apologies for long question(s). All suggestions appreciated!

[ConradBhart]

Thanks, The Wizard board I know is ok as the Squirrel is working. I thought there might be a problem with the Hawk. I know the obvious thing is to pull it out which I can but it was a bit of struggle getting it in and I don’t like disturbing it too much in case of damaging it. May have to though.

My main concern is my whether my suggested way of copying things lets me end up with a drive I can boot from.

[ConradBhart]

Thanks for the info. I am only just getting myself set up properly so have yet to get something like WinUAE or Amiga Forever, though I realise this kind of emulation software will be very useful. I will read the web-links you gave & see how I go.

[ConradBhart]

Will be checking out WinUAE for copying. What I want too is a back-up drive(s) that I can use as a complete plug-in and play replacement if one of my drives goes down. Quite possible as they are quite old now.

What I am not sure is if I just copy my drive onto another device it will autoboot or if I need to copy it with any special copying software. This might be obvious to many but I am a bit out of touch with a lot of the system stuff. Trial & error should tell me I guess.