Blasted MAX Blast!!

[Gustavus]

A friend of mine has an old system -- Shuttle Hot433 MB, AMD 486-DX4 CPU, Windows 95 OSR2 OS -- which she uses for word processing mainly. It was crashing and when I checked she had the HD almost filled to capacity, so I offered to install a new HD for her. I bought a Maxtor 13.6 Gig drive and a Promise Ultra 33 controller -- since the motherboard BIOS could not handle the large drive. Installed the Promise and the Maxtor without problem, FDISKed and FORMATed the drive to a single 13.6 partition and then tried to copy the old C drive, 1.2Gig, to the new Maxtor using the MAX Blast software. It can't see the drive. Maxtor says there is no way their software will work with the Promise controller. They suggested I just install the Maxtor on the secondary of the MB even though the BIOS can't see the full size. I tried that and no matter what I do, the system hangs as soon as it sees the Maxtor during bootup.
I have concluded two things from this. Maxtor tech support is non existent and do not volunteer to fix a friends old computer.
Any one have a suggestion of how to get around the problem? I had planned to copy the old C drive to the new Maxtor, set the Maxtor active so her system booted from the Maxtor and leave the old 1.2 Gig drive in her machine as an archive for Word Perfect documents -- which she prepares as a business. I have system transfer disks from Western Digital, IBM and other manufacturers, but they all expect to see one of their drives as the destination in the drive copy operation, and abort ther operation if they do not.

 

[dcdomain]

To get the information to transfer, I had a similar problem with a crappy Compaq. What I finally did was pull BOTH drives out of the system, stuck it in another system and copied the data that way. Have you tried that?

Then again, you stated that the system won't boot with the Maxtor harddrive in it right? Did you think about grabbing Maxtor's ata100 controller? Not sure if they sell anything less... sorry about your problems with Maxtor, I've had great experiences with them...

 

[Gustavus]

dcdomain
The Maxtor is on the Promise controller and if I boot into Windows 95 it is recognized as full capacity and works just fine. To test that, I have copied all sorts of things from the C drive to it and then done file compares etc. In other words, it is installed and setup OK. I am about to set the new Maxtor up as the new bare active drive, do a fresh install of Windows 95 to it etc. The only reason I was reluctant to do that was she has a bunch of office software I am not anxious to reinstall since I am unfamilar with a lot of it. Plus which she has several years of accumulated work on the old C drive which is why it is chock full now. I have the weekend to think about it, and if nothing better comes along, will do a fresh install of Windows 95 to the Maxtor on Monday. Can't even install Windows 98 since the system is so old and underpowered. Of course, I only got rid of my IBM selectric a couple of years ago -- had kept it for typing in forms -- so I can't say much about her keeping a museum piece that works for what she wants to do with it.

 

[dcdomain]

So basically everything works fine, except you can't get the MaxBlast software to work on that particular system. Well along the lines of my old suggestion, if you have another computer around, you could try using the MaxBlast on that computer with the two harddrives in it, copy the data, shut down the computer and put the two drives back into your friends computer.

But anyway, it's always best to do a fresh install (although you won't be able to improve on the OS and what not). And yes I agree, it's going to be a pain for you to reinstall all those programs...

 

[DoctorBooze]

I don't know what this MAXblast software is, but can't you keep the old drive hooked up to the mobo (C: I guess), the new drive on the Promise adaptor (D, boot up into DOS mode, and just `xcopy` everything across? OK, it might not be bootable, you'll need a boot floppy, but once the big disc is drive C: again you can boot off floppy and say `sys c:` then it should boot fine.

dcdomain, I always do what I can to avoid fresh installs. They're always too much pain. Maybe I've just been lucky but this Win98 install I'm running now, originally done in 1998, and having been ported between machines twice, not to mention dozens of other hardware upgrades and changes, and upgraded endlessly with OSR2 then stuff from Microsoft Update, runs dead stable; it's been up for at least a fortnight right now, and gets used for at least a couple of hours every day.

 

[Von Ribbentrop]

You could give Norton Ghost a shot. You'd have to add a second partition on the new drive for the image file. It should work.

 

[MrChicken]

Why cant you....

Leave the old drive a C:
Hook up the new drive on the promise as D:
Boot into windows and drag and drop all of C: onto D: ?

Then swap the drive order and use a boot floppy to set the new drive as active?


Oh yeah, you'll have to set windows to show all files, and dont include the swap file in the copy.

 

[Gustavus]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I could have done a fresh Windows 95 install today at her office, but there is a problem I don't know how to get around. As I said the machine is an antique; Jaton 58P video card, Televideo Wavetable 32 sound card, Cardinal MVP33.6I internal modem etc. I am sure there is no chance of finding drivers for some of these cards anywhere -- the sound card in particular is long gone.

I have PowerQuest's Drive Image so I may try it -- but it is not necessarily compatible with a SCSI drive, which is how the Promise controller looks to the system. It is worth a try though. I can also try

XCOPY C:\E:\/R/I/C/H/K/E/Y

which works in some cases. What I am trying to avoid is being called on to install drivers I don't have and most likely can't find. Again thanks.
Gus Simmons

Oh yes. I just downloaded FileCopy from Russ' site -- which I suspect is pretty much the XCOPY or XCOPY32 above.

 

[WildDreamer]

Just in case you need 'em:

Jaton 58P video driver

Televideo sound driver

Cardinal MVP336i modem driver

 

[Gustavus]

Wilddreamer
I am impressed -- and thanks. I thought there was no chance of ever finding drivers for the Televideo sound card. They disappeared at about the same time as the Aria sound cards did. The Jaton I knew was still around. Thanks again.
Gus Simmons

With those in hand I am willing to do a fresh install of the OS which is needed anyway. She has been living with a system that will not shut down normally for a long time. The screen saying Windows is preparing to shut down comes up and then the system hangs without ever going to the screen saying it is now OK to turn off the machine -- and the obvious check for a non-responding program dosn't come up with anything.

 

[RickH]

MrChicken--- you can't copy in Windows as some files are in use and will not copy. I have used MaxBlast many times. Do you have the latest version?? Drive Image may work. R.

 

[The Wildcard]

Evil...

 

[Gustavus]

RichH
I have a four or five disks of MaxBlast -- including the very latest that came with a 30Gig drive I just bought. I have used MaxBlast several times in the past with no difficulty. The problem this time is that the drive must be on the Promise controller because of it's size and the antique MB BIOS, and MaxBlast can't see it -- since MaxBlast only recognizes IDE drives. Maxtor tech support has confirmed that the MaxBlast software will not work to transfer a drive to another drive that is on a Promise controller -- Ultra or Raid. The software that came with my 30 Gig IBM drive had no trouble transferring to a drive on a Promise Ultra 100 controller -- but it won't work unless it detects that it is transferring to an IBM drive so I can't use it with the Maxtor drive.

I have Power Quest's Drive Copy and can't use it either since it expects to see the source drive as SLAVE and the new drive as MASTER -- so it also can't cope with the Promise controller. With Drive Copy, Drive Image and Partition Magic you would think I could do what I want, but so far no. I have a plan laid out for Monday that I am reasonably certain will get the job done -- but at the expense of a lot of work I should not have to do.

Incidentally, has anyone ever gotten a response from Promise Tech Support? I have tried several times in the past -- not in connection with this incident -- and have NEVER received an answer to any query -- period.

 

[MrChicken]

I just tried the copy and paste in windowsME. It copied everything correctly except the "_restore" folder contents, which 95 doesnt have.

I remember walking a guy through this over the phone two years ago, when he was upgrading his hard drive. Until then I had always done the boot to DOS and xcopy or xcopy from within 95. The size of the total file space used ends up being different, because of the cluster sizes, but the file count is what you want to check.