Restore Drive Image

[chaszal]

Hello folks,
Can I "restore" a Drive Image 2000 image (on CDs) of my Win98 HD to a partition on my new WinXP notebook machine, if I install DI on the new machine? I want to transport everything over (about 4G). I think the partition has to be changed to? from NFTS? (sp?) and made to a bootable partition rather than a logical drive which I think it is now; I'm a bit foggy on this partitioning thing. (I have Partition Magic 2000 as well) So, any tips, pitfall warnings would be appreciated. Or if there is another way to transport, please advise.
Chas

[Steve R Jones]

First off, Win98 will choke to death when it sees all the new hardware.

Second, Win98 must be "C" drive aka primary partition.

I'm a pretty brave guy, but I wound't even think about attempting this.

[104456]

Its not a recommended solution to reinstall them backwards you are supposed to start with the oldest version first and install it within the bootable section of the first drive [up to 9GB] but as you asked and with no guarantees:

Install windows 98 after XP

You would be better off starting from the begining and removing your present XP installation,making two partition [98 for the first and XP to the second] and reinstall both afresh.
BTW does the notebook actually have 98 drivers as many newer laptops do not seem to support older oprating systems?

[chaszal]

Thanks gentlemen, seems like it would be a bad idea. Idiosyncrasies of Win98 (like wanting to be on C:, or "choking" on new hardware had not occured to me. The plan now is to just store the data on the XP and reformat/reinstall on the Win98 machine which I'll probably be giving away. Now I just have to figure out what to store on the other gazillion gigabytes capacity of the notebook, before it's stolen of course. Thanks for that excellent link 104456. One more question, are there any issues regarding storage of data (including program specific data; ie. unique file extensions) on a NTFS partition, which would then be copied to a FAT32. (yes, I have no idea of the significance of NTFS or FAT32, apart from that they cannot interact)
Thanks in advance,
Chas

[104456]

Not sure what specifically your asking XP and 2K can use both FAT32 and NTFS partitions but 98,95,ME can only see FAT32 partitions [FAT16 as well if you want to be specific ] but not NTFS partitions.
Files can be copied across to the FAT32 partition in XP or 2K if that helps.
If your storing data Id suggest doing it on a FAT 32 partition then both OSs can access it.

[chaszal]

Thanks 104456, you answered my question. Just as a matter of interest, Fred Langa's newsletter today addressed the issue of ghosting between two different machines. He suggested "But here's an off-the-wall option that might work: If you can set up your entire work environment inside a Virtual PC, you *can* move the VPC setup and disk files from one host PC to another. No matter what hardware the host PC has, the VPC's virtual "hardware" is always the same. So, if you installed VPC hosting software on both your PCs, you *could* lift an entire VPC setup with all your installed apps and data intact, and simply drop it (via CD, network, whatever) into another PC, and pick up from where you left off. The software won't even know it's been moved. "