I’ve read the rcent threads that deal with this general area but would be re-assured for some advice for my particular problem.
About two weeks ago my computer finally lost the plot. Started with bios exceptions, then I couldn’t get windows to load at all, finally - and because I’m really hopeless at this stuff – I bought a new 10.2 Gig H/D (the cunning plan was to transfer across the existing data to the new drive on a newly re-installed win95 platform). That plan didn’t work so I packed up the box and took it away for repair.
Now I seem to have everything everywhere – about 4 times everywhere. I’m pretty sure everything I need is on the new drive so I wondered if people thought this would be a way forward:
(1) Delete/re-format/re-install Win95 on the old drive and then transfer back (from the new drive) only one copy of what I need
(2) Wipe the new drive/re-install and partition it (I’m about to upload my first proper web site so I’d like to keep all the related s/w together (there’s quite a lot) but apart from other stuff. I also want to take a look at the whole linux kernal/not-an-o/s thing).
So, in theory, I’d end up with the old drive containing windows programmes/the day to day stuff and the new drive with graphic design/all the web site internet stuff sharing with, but partitioned from, linux.
I remember seeing I have FAT32 but this is someone to whom a path is what I walk down – really basic knowledge and almost exclusively incompetent.
Any suggestions on how I can rationalise this almighty mess – and at the same time back up often and quite quickly ?
I had to look at that three times before I could make any sense of it… I don’t think that W95 supports more than 2 gigs per partition. W98 does. You’re going to have 5 partitiions on the new drive.
Might as well just format & partition the new drive, use the software that comes with it to copy the old hd to one paritition [if it fits]. Then you can suck the data items from that partition later after you install W95 on the new HD…
Sorry,I didn’t quite understand everything in the OP, but for partitioning problems there are some good programs out there. I personally use Partition Magic(can’t quite remember if it is shareware or pay anymore). It will easily copy a partition to another drive, leaving it as a bootable backup if you’re normal first partition completely crashes. Although if there are system error already in the original, the the copy might just duplicate those as well.
The earlier versions of Win95 were limited to 2 gigs per partition, but I think that was fixed in later versions. That said, it’s also a good idea to keep two copies of anything that you can’t afford to lose, on separate drives. Anything that you wouldn’t mind losing, or for which you still have installation disks, this isn’t an issue.
Ideally you’d want to back up all copies of the files you want to keep. Then format both drives and start all over. If you had hardware problems, even if looks like you have 4 copies of everything, some of the copies may be corrupt.
If you don’t have a suitable backup drive, this may be a good excuse to buy a CD-R drive. If you don’t want to do that, the next best thing I can think of is to find all the copies of all the files you want to keep, and copy them onto one of the hard drives. Format the other drive and install WIndows on it, then boot from that and restore the files.
By the way, have you run Scandisk yet? You might want to before making backups.
If your version of Win95 supports FAT32, I think it should handle >2GB partitions. If it says “OSR2” on your Win95 CD-ROM, it should be supported.
I recommend wiping it all clean. With 4(!?) copies of your original disk, there’s a lot of unnecessary systems files and program files.
Either delete 3 copies and transfer to the original drive, or, since I’m guessing that the original disk is now functional with an OS, reformat the entire second disk.
Back up the files you wish to keep, and put them on the other disk first, or they’ll be gone.
Sorry if I wasn’t very clear - kind of reflects how i feel about dealing with this. Anyway the consenus has reassured me so I’ve just got to bite the bullet and do it. Cheers.