An electrostatic copying apparatus has a housing having at its top surface a transparent plate on which to place an original to be copied, a rotary drum disposed within the housing and having a photosensitive member on its surface, a charging, a developing, a transferring and a cleaning mechanism which are successively arranged around the rotary drum in the moving direction of its surface, an optical system for projecting the image of the original onto the surface of the rotary drum between the charging means and the developing means, and a receptor sheet conveying system for transferring a receptor sheet through a transfer station defined between the surface of the rotary drum and the transferring mechanism: A support is mounted on the housing so that it is slidable in the forward and rearward directions between its operating position within the housing and its pulled-out position ahead of the housing, and the rotary drum and the developing device are mounted on the support so that they can be separately and independently detached from the support. An electrostatic copying process can be efficiently practiced by using this apparatus.