[ale] migrating win98 hard drive

[John Mills]

ALErs -

On 14 Apr 2003, James P. Kinney III wrote:

> So I'm looking at a tar copy (using toms root/boot). But that won't
> handle the MBR. Can I just dd the MBR? Before? After? Can I format the
> drive, dd the old drive onto the new formatted drive and have the rest
> of the drive as free space. Will dd respect block and sector structure
> of the new drive?

The short answer is 'Yes'. I _think_ "c:> fdisk /mbr" is your friend, 
_but_ it may have migrated to 'format'. LOOK THIS UP. Then:

 0. cruise 'help' in win98 or 'http://support.microsoft.com' to confirm
the syntax,
 1. make a boot disk for all flavors of boots you are going to need,
 2. test them &8-),
 3. put a minimal set of utilities on the Win98 boot disk, including
'fdisk' or what you found you will need to rewrite the MBR,
 4. do your brain transplant,
 5. boot the Win98 floppy and rewrite the MBR with M$ 'fdisk' ('format'?),
 6. boot Linux from _that_ floppy (assuming you have a dual-boot setup),
 7. Edit 'grub.conf' if you changed relevant partitioning,
 8. Run 'grub --recheck' or whatever option causes it to review the drives
('# man grub' for this one - I forget the formation.), and
 9. Hold your breath and reboot the $%^#$!!

Good luck.

 John Mills
 john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu

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