Restoring Win98SE Install

[Poontos]

Situation:

Same hardware, just a different HD.

Was setup (I have not touched the data, just unplugged it) like so:
C:\1GB FAT32 (Boot files)
D:\3GB FAT32 (Win98SE)
F:\6GB NTFS (Win2K)
G:\6GB NTFS (WinXP)
H:\6GB FAT32 (Data on the rest)
I:\6GB FAT32
J:\5GB NTFS
K:\4GB NTFS

The key is that I can still somehow boot into that Win98SE install (it took a long time to setup and I do not have time to re-install all the apps and such).

Due to another drive failing (not listed in the above partitions), I got a new 80GB HD and I want to use it as my primary.

So I have physically unplugged the existing, so the drive letters don't get all fubar'd with the new drive.

Hopefully the following will accomidate the key mentioned above (being able to get into that win98 install without having to flip the drive cables around all the time), so first I am installing Win2K and in the setup, I have made:

C:\FAT32 1.1GB
D:\Unformatted 4GB
E:\Unformatted 6GB
F:\Win2K Pro (installing right now)

Once I have the OS ready to go, and I plug the old drive back in, in slave mode, and tell the BIOS to continue to boot of this new drive, will my drive letters get messed up, because of all the ones specified on the old drive, or will Windows (98, 2k, XP) figure out that the new drive gets first dibs on the drive letters?

I guess if I cannot somehow boot into the Win98 partition without making any physical changes, I could tell the BIOS to boot off of the second HD whenever I needed to get into Win98, correct?

Thank you!

 

[Poontos]

Bump

 

[Thor86]

Have you tried using Symantec Norton Ghost 2002? That would be the best bet for transferring a drive image from one hdisk to another without having to re-install anything.

 

[Poontos]

Originally posted by: Thor86
Have you tried using Symantec Norton Ghost 2002? That would be the best bet for transferring a drive image from one hdisk to another without having to re-install anything.

So I could just ghost the image from the D:\(Win98SE install) drive and mirror it onto the "D:" drive on the new PC.

What would I do for the C:\ drive files that were on required for the dual boot and such?

Maybe the simpliest solution would be to continue to set things up on the new drive and when I need to boot into Win98SE on the old drive, I guess I could just go into the bios and tell it to boot of HD-1 versus HD-0. What do you think? Will that work?


Thanks!

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: Poontos

So I could just ghost the image from the D:\(Win98SE install) drive and mirror it onto the "D:" drive on the new PC.

What would I do for the C:\ drive files that were on required for the dual boot and such?

Maybe the simpliest solution would be to continue to set things up on the new drive and when I need to boot into Win98SE on the old drive, I guess I could just go into the bios and tell it to boot of HD-1 versus HD-0. What do you think? Will that work?

You should be able to image any/all partitions and correspondingly duplicate the images to your new drive.

Why do you want to keep using the failing drive? What I stated was for complete replacement, and if you can image the failing drive/partitions to the new drive hooked up as a secondary slave, then after doing so, you should be able to hook up the new drive as a primary master and boot up without any problems, and all your parititions/installs/apps should be fine.

If you still want to keep the failing drive, I suggest you create a backup of your drive/partition image files, and then format the old drive and check it for a surface errors.

 

[Poontos]

Originally posted by: Thor86

Originally posted by: Poontos

So I could just ghost the image from the D:\(Win98SE install) drive and mirror it onto the "D:" drive on the new PC.

What would I do for the C:\ drive files that were on required for the dual boot and such?

Maybe the simpliest solution would be to continue to set things up on the new drive and when I need to boot into Win98SE on the old drive, I guess I could just go into the bios and tell it to boot of HD-1 versus HD-0. What do you think? Will that work?

You should be able to image any/all partitions and correspondingly duplicate the images to your new drive.

Why do you want to keep using the failing drive? What I stated was for complete replacement, and if you can image the failing drive/partitions to the new drive hooked up as a secondary slave, then after doing so, you should be able to hook up the new drive as a primary master and boot up without any problems, and all your parititions/installs/apps should be fine.

If you still want to keep the failing drive, I suggest you create a backup of your drive/partition image files, and then format the old drive and check it for a surface errors.

The failing drive was sent to IBM for an RMA, it is not a variable in all of this.

Could I just tell the BIOS to boot off of HD-1 (which would be Primary - Slave once I plug it back in), when I want to load up the Oses on the old drive and when I am done, just flip the BIOS back to HD-0 (the default new drive Primary Master)?

Thanks.

 

[Poontos]

Tried using my BIOS to boot from the drive. That works, but of course the new HD already has a D: drive setup, so Windows craps out saying it cannot find D:\Windows... blah blah...

Win2K on the old drive boots up fine though, which I have not gotten my head around, since I think the drive it was installed on, is already specified on the new drive.

Can I just do a direct Ghost image from the old D: drive to the new one and copy some of the important dual boot files from the old C:\ drive to the new one, so I can boot into this Win98 install on the old D: drive?


Thank you