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Windows 98 Hard drive Cloning


pathwayus69

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"No operating system found" sounds like a msg that the boot partition of the HDD is not active. With PartitionMagic 8 boot floppies you could set the boot partition of the target HDD in the laptop to active, maybe this works.

Copying partitions seems to be the wrong approach, or at least very time-consuming. Maybe you should clone the whole disk, not individual partitions. You would need to take the source HDD out of the laptop and you could use Ghost v11 under WinXP on another PC to clone the whole HDD, with the forensic parameter -ir [=image raw]. You would need two, not just one, IDE docking stations or IDE-to-USB adapters for the source and target HDDs and they should be different models/have different VID/PID. I, for example, use the Sharkoon USB 3.0 and the Sharkoon USB 2.0 + eSATA docking stations for IDE+SATA HDDs. They are compatible with Hard Disk Sentinel and can indicate HDD Health for IDE and SATA HDDs, also under Win98. If Hard Disk Sentinel indicates an Ok HDD Health, you may have little need to clone the HDD, except as a backup HDD.

Another possibility, if you do wish to proceed with the copying of partitions, would be to install Partition Table Doctor v3.5 on your laptop, then create a bootable backup floppy with the partition etc stuff of the source HDD, then restore the Partition Table Doctor stuff onto a blank/wiped HDD and then copy the partitions. If something goes wrong with your copying the partitions, PTDD may perhaps be able to repair it.

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7 hours ago, Destro said:

yup but this would work 100% on a fresh install of 98.  You wouldn't have a problem copying those files from disk to disk on XP.

I wouldn't count on it. I have seen Short Filename issues with files that are part of a fresh Install. It may depend upon what features you Install. I would have to do a fresh Install to find out which files are involved.

Problems occur when the Short Filename is used in the Registry.

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5 hours ago, Multibooter said:

"No operating system found" sounds like a msg that the boot partition of the HDD is not active. With PartitionMagic 8 boot floppies you could set the boot partition of the target HDD in the laptop to active, maybe this works.

Not to be grumpier than usual, but the specific issue has already been diagnosed EXACTLY (and how to fix it provided) no need for further speculations:

Quote

As expected there are two (separate) issues.

Issue #1: the third sector of the VBR is blank (should contain boot code)
Issue #2: the MBR code is (almost) blank

 

And - for the record - the partition is actually active (in practice it is the only thing that is "right":

https://msfn.org/board/topic/178018-windows-98-hard-drive-cloning/?do=findComment&comment=1157698

Quote

Yes, the partition table is seemingly fine, no problems there:


Entry	Type	Boot	bCyl	bHead	bSect	eCyl	eHead	eSec	StartSector	NumSectors
#0	0B	80	0	1	1	1023	254	63	63		75327777
#1	0F	00	1023	254	63	1023	254	63 	75327840	2812320
#2	00	00	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0
#3	00	00	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0

 

 

This said, good to see you around :).

jaclaz

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Hi dencorso, hi jaclaz - nice to see you too!

Partition Table Doctor v3.5 is an excellent tool to check and repair the MBR, the partition table and the boot sector. PTD works Ok under Win98 and WinXP.

I have several nearly-identical Inspiron 7500 laptops, from around 2001. The internal boot HDDs of the laptops contain some very complicated initial stuff (fat16/fat32/ntfs/ext3 partitions, a System Commander BOOT.DAT backup (1536 bytes!) restored upon a previous installation of the DDO software Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools v11.2 so that I can use also under Win98 a 2nd internal 320GB IDE HDD in the right-bay HDD module). Below are some of my notes about the cloning of a 120GB source HDD (240 Heads !!) to a 128GB KingSpec SSD:
1) I could start cloning the internal boot HDD with Symantec Ghost v11, but  near the end of cloning I got the following err msg by Ghost:
  "Internal Error 36000. An internal inconsistency has been detected. If this problem persists, contact Technical Support"-> Ok, text in separate stus window: "99% complete, 688 MB/min, 114.469 MB copied,
  4 MB remaining, 2:46:10 elapsed, Time remaining 0:00"
 and in an other window:
  Source: local drive [1], 114473 MB
  Destination: [2}, 121082 MB
  Current partition: 22/22 Type=0 [Unpartitioned] Size 15846 MB"
  then general protection fault
  then Error: Could not allocate page table memory, then A>, I just pulled the plug of the laptop (no battery was inside)
  Ghost apparently choked on the tricky initial stuff of the source HDD.

2) I then restored the stuff backed up by Partition Table Doctor, from the source HDD, onto the target HDD/SSD. This fixed the problem. After setting the boot partition of the target HDD/SSD to active, System Commander and the MS operating systems came up Ok with the cloned HDD/SSD in a near-identical Inspiron 7500. The Linux partitions were backed up and restored separately by TeraByte Image v2.92, which works Ok under Win98 and WinXP. Ghost v11 seems to choke with Linux partitions. TeraByte Image actually seems to be a better tool for cloning than Ghost v11. The bootable PTD floppy was created by -> General -> Create Emergency Disk.

3 - QUESTION: The Inspiron 7500 has an ancient Phoenix Bios v4.0 Release 6.0. Under Win98 my partitioning software creates 240 heads partitions on the internal bootable HDD and on the 2nd HDD in the right-bay HDD module. On external drives, however, connected via USB or eSATA, 255 heads partitions are created under Win98. My partitioning software under WinXP can only create 255 heads partitions. Is there any partitioning software which can create 240 and 255 heads partitions under WinXP?

Edited by Multibooter
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3 minutes ago, Multibooter said:

3 - QUESTION: The Inspiron 7500 has an ancient Phoenix Bios v4.0 Release 6.0. Under Win98 my partitioning software creates 240 heads partitions on the internal bootable HDD and on the 2nd HDD in the right-bay HDD module. On external drives, however, connected via USB or eSATA, 255 heads partitions are created under Win98. My partitioning software under WinXP can only create 255 heads partitions. Is there any partitioning software which can create 240 and 255 heads partitions under WinXP?

You see, most "partitioning software" are (right or wrong) using a "Pareto principle".

They are (not all of them, the best ones, a number of them are "terrible") only good in a large number of cases but tend to fail in some "edge" or "non-standard conditions".

In this specific case it is not an actual limitation of the software, it is the way the whole stuff work which is problematic, it is basically a "chain of lies".

What happens is that the actual hard disk (the actual thingy with spinning platters) actually has 255 heads (not really, but the hard disk on board controller exposes the actual internal arrangement, which is unknown as 255), the BIOS lies to the software/OS  telling it has 240 heads and the DOS/9x software/OS cannot but adapt to this wrong info, whilst any NT system will blatantly ignore whatever the BIOS says and re-gather the info provided by the hard disk on board controller.

The software usually creates partitions aligned to the cylinder, i.e. with "end sector" as the max sector per head on the max head (which derives from the geometry of the device), this was the old "MS standard" up to XP, whilst newer softwares would align to either "MB", which is the "new" MS standard starting with Vista or you can select between the two .

So, in theory, you would need on NT a "filter driver" lying to the software in the same way the BIOS lies.

For these cases the  way out is manually making a partition table, nothing particularly difficult as long as you are wanting to make Primary Partiitions only, a bit more complex if you are wanting to make more complex setups involving Extended and Logical Volumes inside it.

A better (easier) solution is using a virtual disk driver, under XP you should have no issues in using the VDK by Ken Kato, using a .pln descriptor file to set the "wanted" geometry, but unfortunately the VDK driver "hooks" at a level where, while it creates a "physicaldrive", this drive is not seen in Disk Management, a different partitioning tool may still (or it may not) see the virtual disk and be capable of operating on it, and - besides - the tool may well have been coded to have 255/63 as "fixed" geometry. :(

I don't remember right now about any partitioning software/tool where you can choose/set the heads/sector geometry under XP, though I seem to remember there was a nice little tool that allowed "manual" or "almost manual" operation :dubbio:.

But what would be the "actual use" of this tool?

Remember that if you use a "wrong" HS geometry you will need to patch the FAT32 or the NTFS PBR to remove CHS access, because it won't boot XP or other NT systems on a machine that reports a different geometry, see:

http://blog.clemens.endorphin.org/2007/12/removing-chs-based-access-from-windows_3170.html

jaclaz

 

 

 

 

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Well, the Ranish Partition Manager (PART244.EXE) allows some control but is unable to format FAT-32 with more 16 kiB clusters, although you can always reformat the FAT-32 partition with Ridgecrop's FAT32FORMAT on XP, to fix that, if needed.
On the non-free front, RLoew's RFDisk and Symantec's GDISK (on DOS, using direct ATA commands) or GDISK32 on XP may be your best bets.

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this is why I tried to recommend not cloning.  But to simply try to get a bootable partician on the laptop on the new drive and copying.  I don't think the issue is with the laptop, the problem is that laptop doesn't like your new harddrive becasue it doesn't support it properly since its too new.  Your best bet is to partician the new hard drive so its no bigger than 20 gigs or whatever because 120g is too big for that computer.  Or could just be that it doesn't like the drive at all and making a smaller partician doesn't matter.

Edited by Destro
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18 hours ago, jaclaz said:

But what would be the "actual use" of this tool?

I love your explanation about the "chain of lies", with the BIOS providing fake news to the operating system.

There were several interesting comments posted at your link http://blog.clemens.endorphin.org/2007/12/removing-chs-based-access-from-windows_3170.html

indicating that the ThinkPad R40 and R60 have the same 240 heads issue as my Inspiron 7500 laptops have.

The "actual uses" of WinXP (or Linux?) partitioning software with which you could easily set or change the disk geometry to 240 heads are probably limited to DDOing under Win98, on computers with an ancient BIOS, therefore no commercial market:

1) to partition a DDOed HDD to FAT32 partition sizes > 196GB; PartitionMagic 8 under Win98 can create FAT32 partitions with a max.size of only 196GB

2) as a replacement of the partitioning utility contained in WD DLG Tools, which can create under Win98 FAT32 partitions > 196GB (e.g. 320GB FAT32 partitions) on a DDOed HDD, Both DLG Tools and System Commander, however, install their own MBRs and can therefore not be run at the same time. Partitioning with the WD DLG Tools is a very cumbersome procedure: I have to manually back up C:\SC\BOOT.DAT, remove System Commander temporarily, run WD DLG Tools, manually restore BOOT.DAT and then enable System Commander, requiring multiple reboots.

3) for easier partitioning of DDOed HDDs in an external USB/eSATA docking station or with an external USB adapter instead of inside the laptop in a special right-bay or left-bay module. Such special modules for the Inspiron 7500 are nearly impossible to find, the last time I had seen one at ebay was maybe 8 years ago.

Here my specific case:

My Inspiron 7500 laptops can contain up to 3 HDDs: the main boot drive (in the HDD caddy at the bottom side of the laptop), a 2nd non-bootable HDD in the right-bay and a 3rd bootable HDD in the left-bay. The ancient BIOS of the Inspiron 7500 works Ok only, with some tweaks, with HDDs up to 120GB, the maximum HDD capacity displayed at BIOS POST is 65535MB. To overcome this BIOS limitation I DDOed large-capacity HDDs for the right-bay and for the left-bay with Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools v11.2 for Windows (v5.09.03, 5Apr2006); only this build worked for me. In the right-bay of the laptop I now have a WD 320GB IDE HDD, as an internal data drive in regular use under WinXP and Win98 for over a year, no issues. The Unofficial 137GB patch works fine with the DDOed 320GB HDD. This internal 2nd 320GB HDD, containing data accessible under both WinXP and Win98, has been the most useful upgrade of the Inspiron 7500. Unfortunately PartitionMagic 8 can only create partitions up to 196GB, but I wanted just one logical 320GB FAT32 partition on the DDOed HDD, to save drive letters. The only choice I had was to partition painstakingly with the utility provided by WD DLG Tools.

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15 hours ago, dencorso said:

Well, the Ranish Partition Manager (PART244.EXE) allows some control ...
On the non-free front, RLoew's RFDisk and Symantec's GDISK (on DOS, using direct ATA commands) or GDISK32 on XP may be your best bets.

Thanks dencorso. I haven't tried Ranish Partition Manager yet. I would love to hear from RLoew about RFDisk.

Edited by Multibooter
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RFDISK can create Partitions with any geometry settings.

Changing an existing Partition's geometry can be done but would be problematical.
It would be easier to switch existing Partitions to LBA access.

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@dencorso

Well, Ranish is DOS, I thought that the request was for something running under Windows XP.

@Multibooter

Yes, besides your (and other) DELL's, a number of IBM/LENOVO's and some HP's are known to use the 240 heads.

But - again - if it is a primary partition, you can use *any* tool to create it manually and then use another program (like the suggested Ridgecrop's FAT32FORMAT) to later format it.

If you want to go the "manual" way, you might find of use my little spreadsheet:

http://reboot.pro/topic/2959-chs-lba-translations/

http://reboot.pro/topic/2959-chs-lba-translations/?p=74116

and/or my batch (though it won't work directly for a DDOed drive, it should be able to create the partition entry data,  then you can use tiny hexer or another disk editor to copy it to the partition table):

http://reboot.pro/topic/3191-mbrbatch-001-alpha/

last "original" (working fine on XP):

http://reboot.pro/topic/3191-mbrbatch-001-alpha/?p=70584

the "modified/last" version by Lancelot (hopefully running on later systems and x64) can be found here:

http://reboot.pro/topic/20213-found-mbrbatch-lancelots-version-x86x64/

jaclaz

 

 

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On 12/28/2018 at 3:48 PM, dencorso said:

And there's also this KILLCHS.EXE by Clemens Fruhwirth, which I've compiled (for DOS) a long time ago by request, for something related, IIRR.
I'm sure @jaclaz's memory about it wil be clearer than mine. Be as it may, it's freeware and opensource and it's attached below.

killchs.7z

I can only add that it works in DOS AND in NT systems, original release post:

http://reboot.pro/topic/8528-how-to-patch-fat32-boot-sector/?p=73205

jaclaz

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