Restore Drive Image to another computer

Hello folks,

I have been regularly burning to CD's drive images (PowerQuest's Drive Image 2000) of my unpartitioned workhorse Win98 10G capacity, 5G used, (don't laugh, I like it and it works for me) desktop machine, which I use for business and personal. I've never had to restore an image, I'm fastidious about maintenance, but the machine is now almost 10 years old, and, I know, sometimes a hard drive will just fail. In anticipation of this, I would like to try putting an exact copy of the Win98 drive on a new FAT32 partition on my XP laptop, to make sure I would be able to do the same onto a new desktop or laptop; call me crazy but I have tweaked the Win98 into a configuration with which I am entirely comfortable and if my old hard drive were to fail sometime sooner or later, I would want to reinstall the whole Win98 drive, not just preserve the data.

I have PowerQuest's Partition Magic and have used it to partition the XP (60G hardrive). The program CD comes with Boot Magic, in order to be able to choose which operating system into which one boots, and which I know I will also have to install ahead of time. I know I will have to create a new FAT32 partition on the XP. Partition Magic's options include "Create a new partition" of course, but also "Install a new operating system".

The other important bit of information is that I tried installing Drive Image to the XP, but that version of Drive Image doesn't seem to function with XP, so I use Acronis True Image v.8 on the XP, and on the other hand I can't seem to get True Image to make an image of the Win98 machine, so it's a bit of a conundrum.

My initial question is, should I/can I install Win98 (ie. choose to install a "new operation system", which choice I believe will automatically create the new appropriate FAT32 partition) onto the XP laptop, and then install the Drive Image Program onto that same partition, and then attempt to restore the Win98 drive image to it?. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Chas

The image backup of your Win98 machine can be restored to a replacement hard drive on your Win98 PC provided you haven't changed the other hardware. However, it can't be restored to a runnable operating system on another PC, since the hardware will be different. You can often restore it to different hardware, and the re-install Windows over the top to get the correct drivers for the new hardware set up. If you are just worried about being able to restore to a different hard drive should your present one fail, that should not be a problem, provided you can find a new hard drive that is recognized by your old PC's hardware. If you want to restore it as another runnable OS on your laptop, that may be possible if Win98 drivers are available for the laptop, but it will be more trouble. After re-installing Win98 to get the correct drivers, your XP will not be bootable, so you would have to fix that problem afterwards.

Hello jdc2000,
Thank you so much for responding. Your response confirms to me that I am rather thick-headed when it comes to hardware, but also gives me cause for brief self-congratulation that I recognized my grave deficiency enough to ask, even though I didn't realize it was a hardware issue :).
If I understand your response correctly, I can go out and purchase a new hard drive, compatible with my old PC's hardware (ie. recognized by it, and how would one determine this?) to have "at the ready" to install in my '98 machine when or if the present one fails, and the restoration of the image would be fairly straightforward. (A little side-question: would I need to install my original CD Win98 OS on that new HD before restoring?)

Another option would be to do as I originally suggested, restore the image to a new FAT32 partition on my XP laptop but I would install the WIN98 OS after restoring the image, in order to install the correct drivers? This rather confuses me a) because I thought that Windows XP had already the drivers for most hardware and b) why would not installing the '98 OS on a new partition before restoring the image install the needed drivers? and c) I thought that installing an OS on a drive or drive partition would format and wipe out everything on it.

Finally, your warning that "after re-installing Win98 to get the correct drivers [my] XP will not be bootable, so [I] would have to fix that problem afterwards." has me (almost) at the point of completely abandoning the idea; that's more "trouble" than I need, to have both computers non-functioning.

Thank you again for enlightening me somewhat on the perilous arena of hardware compatibility, of which it seems I have no idea.

Would an alternative be to purchase a new "backup" computer, reformat its harddrive, install the Win'98 OS, and "restore" the old '98 image to it? Or am I then again entering the murky ground of hardware compatibility?

Densely yours,
Chas

p.s. When I rebooted the '98 machine a couple of hours ago, it made some clicking sounds unheard before, so this potential problem may be more imminent than originally thought.

You should be able to use at least a 30gb drive with your old machine.

I still use a Windows 98(fe) machine, PII, 350mhz, and recently replaced the failing 4.5 gb drive with a 2nd hand drive from ebay.

While I have Drive Image,Ghost,Paragon etc I just used Maxblast the utility for maxtor drives to format and copy the old drive over to the new and set the new to be the bootable master.

Then swapped the new drive for the old, simple, and the new drive is silent as opposed to the squealing/grinding noise the old had started to make !

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I can go out and purchase a new hard drive, compatible with my old PC's hardware (ie. recognized by it, and how would one determine this?) to have "at the ready" to install in my '98 machine when or if the present one fails, and the restoration of the image would be fairly straightforward. (A little side-question: would I need to install my original CD Win98 OS on that new HD before restoring?)

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This option should work fine. You should not need your original Win98 CD for the restore. If you post your system hardware specs, we can determine what hard drive(s) will work in your system. If you are going to do this, the time to test restoration of your Drive Image backup is before you actually need it.

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Another option would be to do as I originally suggested, restore the image to a new FAT32 partition on my XP laptop but I would install the WIN98 OS after restoring the image, in order to install the correct drivers? This rather confuses me a) because I thought that Windows XP had already the drivers for most hardware and b) why would not installing the '98 OS on a new partition before restoring the image install the needed drivers? and c) I thought that installing an OS on a drive or drive partition would format and wipe out everything on it.

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I am assuming that you would want to dual boot Windows XP and Windows 98 on the laptop after restoring the copy of Win98 to a new partition on the laptop. If you don't want to do this, and just want to access the files, then that solution will work fine. If you do want to be able to boot to Windows 98, then you will have to do an over-the-top reinstall of Windows 98. The XP drivers on your XP installation will not work for Windows 98, and the existing driers form your other installation will not be correct for the laptop. Also, when you perform an over-thetop reinstall, it will wipe out the boot information for Windows XP so that only Windows 98 will boot. This can be corrected, but it is a pain.

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Would an alternative be to purchase a new "backup" computer, reformat its harddrive, install the Win'98 OS, and "restore" the old '98 image to it? Or am I then again entering the murky ground of hardware compatibility?

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This is an alternative, but you will need to make sure that any new PC will work with Win98. Windows 98 drivers, including those for motherboard resources, may not be available for some of the newer hardware. You will need to check compatibility before purchasing. You can use a utility like Belarc or Everest to determine your current PC's hardware specs and post them here. We can then tell you if an upgrade or a new PC would be the way to go.

Dear General Winters and jdc2000,
Thank you for your responses and your patience.
(General Winters, I really appreciate your encouraging story of successful annihilation of squealing and grinding)

At the end of this reply, I will post the info from my Belarc Advisor system report. It probably includes more information than you need in order to tell me about compatible HD's, but as I do not understand much of what the report is telling me, I apologize for asking you to cull from it relevant info.

jdc2000, yes, it was my original intention to be able to dual boot, but I wholeheartedly accept your advice that it would be a "pain", and I am now not even going to think about attempting it. However, if restoring the image to a partition on the laptop would allow me to at least access files, that may be a reasonable interim measure, both to confirm the integrity of an image (now on 4 CD's) and also to have the files available during any downtime while I may be setting up a new '98 HD. Am I correct in thinking that I would restore the image to a logical partition, just as I would create for data files?

Following is my Belarc report. I know you will be suitably impressed by the cutting-edge technology I have at my fimgertips, and wonder why I don't display the specs in my sig. I was pleased to note that the report shows my HD status as healthy, for now.

Chas

Profile Date: Friday, April 20, 2007 3:06:23 PM
Advisor Version: 7.1h

Operating System
Windows 98 SE (build 10.2222)

System Model
AOpen America AOpen CUSTOM-PC

Processor a
500 megahertz Intel Pentium III
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board b
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 4.60 PGMA 08/02/99

Drives
10.25 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
4.92 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

ATAPI CD-ROM DRIVE-40X
SONY CD-RW CRX140E [CD-ROM drive]
Generic floppy disk drive (3.5")

QUANTUM FIREBALL CX10.2A [Hard drive] (10.26 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 833923854091, rev A3F.0B00, SMART Status: Healthy

Memory Modules c,d
320 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot '0' has 64 MB
Slot '1' is Empty

Local Drive Volumes
c: (FAT32 on drive 0)10.25 GB4.92 GB free

Controllers
Standard Floppy Disk Controller
Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

Display
RAGE PRO TURBO AGP 2X (English) [Display adapter]
Acer 15.2 [Monitor] (15.2"vis, August 1999)

Bus Adapters
Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller

The hardware you have will support new hard drives in the 40 to 80 GB range with no problems. Newer drives will also be a lot faster than your Quantum Fireball drive. You can get one for about $40-$45 plus shipping from NewEgg. You should be able to restore your image files to a logical partition without problems. However, I would still recommend having a backup of your laptop hard drive first in case of any problems that might occur during the process.

Hello jdc2000,
Thank you.
Will it be sufficient "backup of [my] laptop hard drive", (to allay any "problems that might occur during the process") to make a new current Acronis True Image of C:\ (primary drive containing the XP OS) on a backup partition of the laptop?
A "Quantum Fireball" sounds like the name of a 1950's car with fins and chrome, lots of chrome. If a newer drive would be faster, I guess that's a good thing to look forward to .... virtual fins.
Chas

An Acronis image of the C: drive on the laptop would be a good backup. You might want to burn the image files to a CD/DVD or transfer them to an external drive just in case though.

Thank you again jdc2000,
Your help is much appreciated.
Signing off, and zooming down the road in my Quantum Fireball,
Chas