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Windows98 on SSD HD

W

wlee

Senior member

Just wondering if any of you have installed Windows 98 on an SSD hard drive.

We have an ANCIENT DOS app that we still require on a daily basis. It won't run on anything later than Win98SE. It's currently running on 3 older Dell 4100 PIII machines. 1 of them is out on the production floor, so it's subjected to harsh temp swings. It's about time to change it's HD. I'm considering an 8GB SSD this time.
Transcend 8GB SSD

I'm worried that Win98 will thrash away with temp/page files and ruin it in no time though. If this were WinXP, I could install EWF and kill that prob. Is there anything like EWF for Win98, or any "tweaks" to minimize the prob ?

TIA!

 
Have you tried to run that old app of yours in a 98SE virtual machine ? I've had such an issue myself and that worked fine for me.
 
The app has a Sentinel hardware key. I've tried running it in a VM, but it would never "see" the key-block, even though the driver was loaded correctly.
 
I know what you mean. I had another app with a hardware key and although it did work it would often "loose" the key and hang. I guess that M$ should work more on that legacy port capture thing.

Anyways I suppose that the SSD will do the trick if it is recognized by the BIOS but why go for this ? This is way too expensive for use with just an old app like yours. You can always get a 40GB HD for 37$ from newegg and be done with it. Hell you can get 2 HDs, clone the disks and leave the 2nd out as a backup. You'll probably still save some money and there's no question as to whether this is gonna work.
 
I wouldn't use a SSD it probably will trash it due to its frequent writes.

You might be able to get it running in a VM if the hardware key is USB or parallel if you try to use a VM manager or configuration that assigns full control of those devices / ports to the VM... it isn't always easy, but it is often possible.

If the machines are networked you might be able to boot them over the net and run from a shared disk image on a server somewhere, but that is probably more trouble than it is worth.

If you want a cheap SSD, get an IDE to COMPACT FLASH adapter and pop in a 2GB $7 compact flash and replace it when the thing goes bad, or find another plan if it goes bad too quickly (within a few months).

 
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