Is there an easy way to upgrade a hard drive without a working installCD?
 

I want to upgrade the hard drive in a win98SE machine, possibly creating
multiple boot options with XP and Linux available, but my OEM-supplied
CD is broken. I have a generic Win98 CD, but I don't have the drivers
for my computer, and I'm unsure which drivers I'd need to redownload,
and if I pick the wrong network drivers, I'd be SOL.

Is there a way to image my old 40gb hard drive onto a larger disk when I
don't have a third storage unit avilable that is large enough to hold
the image? I do NOT own Norton Ghost, or any other imaging software, so
whatever is recommended would have to be available for free download and
at least one trial use.

Back in the days of MS-DOS, I'd just install the new HD as a C drive and
move the old drive to the D, format the new HD, partition it, and then
XCOPY *.* everything on the D drive to the C drive using a couple
switches that I can't remember off-hand (I'll have to XCOPY /?) to copy
everything. Will this work with Win98SE or is there a similar simple
procedure?

Is there an easy way to upgrade a hard drive without a working install CD?
 

BootIt Next Generation is available from:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html and it does partitioning,
makes a compressed image, does many other partitioning chores and is a boot
manager. It is not quite as easy to use as Partition Magic but it is half
the cost and has more features. Unlike the crippled PMagic demo, BING is a
*full function* demo you can try for FREE for 30 days. The web site has a
lot of support articles.


--
Regards

Ron Badour
MS MVP 1997 - 2008


"SlickRCBD" wrote in message
. ..
I want to upgrade the hard drive in a win98SE machine, possibly creating
multiple boot options with XP and Linux available, but my OEM-supplied CD
is broken. I have a generic Win98 CD, but I don't have the drivers for my
computer, and I'm unsure which drivers I'd need to redownload, and if I
pick the wrong network drivers, I'd be SOL.

Is there a way to image my old 40gb hard drive onto a larger disk when I
don't have a third storage unit avilable that is large enough to hold the
image? I do NOT own Norton Ghost, or any other imaging software, so
whatever is recommended would have to be available for free download and
at least one trial use.

Back in the days of MS-DOS, I'd just install the new HD as a C drive and
move the old drive to the D, format the new HD, partition it, and then
XCOPY *.* everything on the D drive to the C drive using a couple switches
that I can't remember off-hand (I'll have to XCOPY /?) to copy everything.
Will this work with Win98SE or is there a similar simple procedure?

Is there an easy way to upgrade a hard drive without a workinginstall CD?
 

Ron Badour wrote:
BootIt Next Generation is available from:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html and it does partitioning,
makes a compressed image, does many other partitioning chores and is a boot
manager. It is not quite as easy to use as Partition Magic but it is half
the cost and has more features. Unlike the crippled PMagic demo, BING is a
*full function* demo you can try for FREE for 30 days. The web site has a
lot of support articles.


Would this allow me to install a new C drive, hook up the old drive
TEMPORARILY as a D drive, and copy my current installation onto the new
C drive the way i could if I had another computer make an image of the
current C drive with Ghost and image it onto the new drive?

Making a perfect image is not as important so long as the end result
lets me use all my programs and hardware and keeps my data intact, hence
why I mentioned "XCOPY d: c: /E /H /K". Would that work? It's the
simplest solution. Would the new C drive then be bootable and would my
programs work?