This might be a long one......

I currently have two main hard drives, both ATA100, but one 7200rpm and the other 5400. I have Windows 98 on a partition on the 7200, and Windows XP on the 5400. All drives and partitions are currently FAT32.

As the 7200 runs faster (approximately 20% according to the benchmarks apps I've run), and I now use XP more (ie it will now be my main OS), I want to have XP on the 7200 drive. However, I still want to keep Win 98 as I have it to dual boot to if and when I need to, on the 5400 drive.

I've got Norton Ghost, though I don't yet know how it does this. Does it make an image of the drive, or just copy all the files, folders, etc into one folder?

I am thinking that if I make an image of the Win 98 drive (on one of the other partitions), then format that drive(partition). Then image the XP partition and copy it to the 7200 (newly formatted) partition, format the old XP partition, then copy the original 98 image onto the 5400 partition.

Is this possible? Will I have any problems with booting up to either OS (I curretnly use WinXP's boot menu).

Also, when it's done, should I convert the new XP partition to NTFS? I'm presuming that XP on an NTFS file system will still read files ok on the other FAT32 drives......

Please let me know of any other things I may need to know about.....!

Thanks in advance.....!

You should be able to do this successfully maybe.
There are several factors to keep in mind.

1) Ghost creates a Clone/Image of the drive and can even create an exact forensic image using the -id or -ir switch. This however can only be done drive to drive normally as the image will be as large as the drive is. I would also recommend using Harry O's Boot disc as the default one is well just ok. His is set to auto span the files at 630 MB but you can change that if you like in the Options screen once GHost is loaded.

2) The most important thing will be to keep all your drive letters the same, so that Windows can find all your apps. In other words your C: drive will need to remain your C Drive. So you will need to swap the Slave Master relationship. Which is not big deal but is imperative!

3) While XP is cloneable it can be a bugger! I just did it successfully to different HD, but I did have to jump thru a few hoops. :) It turned out that the Boot track and the Boot.ini file were the key and I had to rebuild these using the Repair Console on the XP CD.
Remember XP is a smart app and know's when you change your hardware config, so it may take some tweaking to get around this. But it is doable.

4) YOu could change to NFTS yes, but I don't know that I'd recommedn it for several reasons. Unless you need the extra file security the drawbacks out weigh the advatages IMO.
FAT 32 is a good File system and is a bit faster then NFTS. But the determining factor as I see it is this...one of the nice things about having two Op Sys's installed is you can use one to help repair the other should it become neccesary. And if you convert XP to NFTS Win98 will not be able to read ANY of the files!

If you plan ahead and you will need to keep the images stored on a drive that is not going to be overwritten while completing this operation. Install/copy Win98 first with the ghost images on the other drive, then move them to the Win98 drive would work. You will be able to boot into W98 at least even if you have to play a little with the XP drive to get it to work. Plus as long as you keep the images around it is all reversable.
Or at worse you will have to reinstall XP.


I think I covered everything :D



http://www.cdrom-guide.com/ubb/4MoDeRaToRs/SiGnAtUrE_ImAgEs/hoss1.gif

Thanks for the help Hoss. :tup:

To be honest, the main concern is Windows 98, as that's got all my important programs and files. I'm not too concerned about having to start agin with XP, though it would obviously be less time consuming to be able to image it if that's easier. I've only really installed a few apps and updates with that.

My Win 98 partition is 10Gb, but only actually takes up 2.5gb, so I could put the image to 4 cd's, if Ghost allows this. Would I have to re=partition it down to around 2.5Gb to fit the space, or would Ghost make an image of the actual spaced used (ie in this instance would it make an image of 10 or 2.5 Gb, if 7.5 Gb is unused)?

A better option might be to reformat the current XP drive, image Win 98 over the the slower drive (ie the old XP one), reformat the old 98 drive, and reinstall XP as a clean install on the faster drive.

It would mean downloading all the updates, etc, but I might be easier and quicker in the long run.

With regards to NTFS, I ultimately intend getting a decent TV capture card, possibly the new Creative one, and want to get another large hard drive to use for storing movies and tv programs to as mpeg files (also to burn the odd vcd/svcd, and eventually dvd). I read that FAT32 doesn't allow files of over 4Gb, so presumably NTFS would be a neccessity if I decide to do this.

np Matt...If your not sweating reinstalling XP then I would not bother imaging it as getting it to work that way may be even more time consuming.
In my case I had it tweaked and did not feel like going thru all that work again.

As for file size, Ghost has a very good compresion ratio, 2.5 GB of data will easily fit on 2 CD's maybe even one!
Unless you use the -id (image disc) or -ir (image raw) switches (& there is one more... -ib image boot I think) I spoke of earlier, it only images the data/used space. So just use the default setting, plus the span setting if your going to burn them off to a CDR. Set the size a bit low in order to leave yourself some head room for the burn....20 or 30 MB to be safe
You could just use/store the images on the other drive that you aren't installing W98 to as well.

If you are going to burn them I recommend saving them to the HD first and then burn them from there later with Nero or whatever vs burning directly from Ghost & DOS. Just make sure your Ghost boot disc has working CDROM support for when you go to install.

As far as I know your are correct about the 4GB limit, but perhaps an alternate solution would be to create a large partition on this drive and convert it to NFTS but leave the partition XP is installed on as FAT32. I'm not sure about this but I see no reason it would not work???

You can also find a few good Ghost linkz & tutorials here
http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6834

If you want to use ghost with XP, you must use version 7.0, Win98 will use V5 or later. Ghost will only image the space used, not the partition size, so if you use V7 it will allow you to create the image directly to cdr/cdrw and will span volumes automatically for you. If I read it right, you want to install the XP image first and then the 98 image second? If so, you will have to use a third party boot manager to get the dual boot to work. Use the "high" compression method and you will find 2.5 gig of data will reduce to around 1-1.5gig, enough to span 2-3cds.

Thanks guys.

I think I will just reformat the XP drive, and image Win 98 over to that and start XP from scratch. I've got XP how I like it, but it shouldn't take too long to do it again. It might be worth making an image of my 98 drive anyway, just as a current state backup.

Originally posted by Hoss
As far as I know your are correct about the 4GB limit, but perhaps an alternate solution would be to create a large partition on this drive and convert it to NFTS but leave the partition XP is installed on as FAT32. I'm not sure about this but I see no reason it would not work???

I didn't realise you could install XP on a FAT32 drive, but it still read an NTFS partition/drive? If so, that's probably the best way for me to go.......

Thanks again......

:beer:

Thinking about it, if I'm going have to reinstall Win XP anyway, I'm probably best to make an image of Win 98, reformat the current Win XP drive, and just upgrade the curretn Win 98 (ie the faster drive) to Win XP, then I can just copy the image of Win 98 to the slower drive......!

Sounds good.....!

B.T.W.
I believe only the PRO version of WinXP has NTFS support.

Think this one should be saved.