sharontango said:
My win98 hdd basically crashed or have clicking sounds when I boot up and
I
am having difficult in installing a win98se into another hdd. The kb and
mouse does not work after 'setup' and basically cannot click "continue'
My question is can I install say ACRONIS into my win xp computerand do an
image of my win98 hdd into a new hdd. If so, is there any precautioons I
need
to take since I have never use Acronis before. Thank you.
The short answer is yes... maybe.
The "maybe" depends on the damage to the drive. If it has failed
electrically so that it can't mount, your options have diminished greatly.
In those cases, there's apparently some data recovery software that will
work on electrically functioning but non-mounting drives. But if the
electronics have well and truly failed, you need the services of
professionals to get the data, and this isn't inexpensive. I usually saw
bills starting around CDN$1000. They can dismantle the drive and mount
the platters on custom electronics - this is something that you cannot do
yourself, and the gear and the facility isn't cheap.
Also, if the damage is to the filesystem, copying damaged files won't help.
But it's very easy and cheap to try, and TrueImage can be quick. In fact
it's probably the fastest way to back up a system. And, once you have made
an image of the drive, you have a backup of the data.
Download and install the free TrueImage Home trial, about 100 meg, from
www.acronis.com to your XP system. Reboot.
Attach your old drive to the XP PC, perhaps via USB2 case (these can be had
for around $20 and are a big help for this). Get the jumpers right! If you
don't the drive won't be recognised properly and the system may hang at
bootup.
Now, run the TrueImage trial, tell it to back up the drive, and create an
image of the old drive. You can also directly attempt to clone the drive
to a new one, but I would suggest that you create an image first and use
that to create a clone later.
I suggest this because if your existing drive is failing, it has limited and
unknown life time left. You need to make best use of that time, and
cloning takes longer. As well, creating the image gives you a backup copy
of the drive's contents so that if you find that the clone didn't work (for
example, because of file corruption on the original) you can start fresh
with the drive and copy the data later.
However, if you choose to clone, choose Manual mode, not Automatic, as
Manual lets you adjust target partition size - this means that if the newer
drive is larger, that space will be used.
You'll have 14 days or so to complete the task, but you may find that
TrueImage is not expensive and worth purchasing.
HTH
-pk
