Copy OS from Internal-turned-External HDD

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Doombot1

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May 25, 2016
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Hello!

I recovered an old IBM 14.4GB HDD from a 1998 Dell Dimension XPS R450 a few weeks ago. It does work. I have an adapter that goes from SATA/IDE (2.5" and 3.5") to USB (as well as a wall voltage to molex/sata power transformer. I want to keep the OS, but on a newer form of storage. If I just plug in the drive to my computer, copy everything (ctrl+c and such, no special software) to a folder, will I be able to say, later, copy the folder directly onto a new drive, and then be able to boot from that drive? Or do I need special cloning software? (There is only 1 Windows partition on the drive (either NT or 98, I cannot remember).

Thank You,

-Doombot1
 
Solution
Solandri
If you mean you want to run this old version of Windows on a new computer, in my experience about 90% of the time that doesn't work. And the 10% where it does work, it'll be very slow and/or unstable. When you install Windows, it installs drivers and configures itself according to the hardware you have. If you then transplant that image onto a new computer, suddenly the hardware doesn't match the drivers. Sometimes Windows can fall back to generic drivers and make them work with your new hardware, but it'll be slower than native drivers.

If that's your intent, then the virtual machine suggestion I gave above is really your best bet.

If you just want the files from the old drive copied to the new drive so you can access them on...
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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Copying won't work, unless the new drive already has the same OS installed on it. Then it might work. Safest bet is to clone it.

For hardware this old, I highly, highly recommend converting the system into a virtual machine and running it on a newer computer. The power consumption on most of these old Pentium systems was pretty outrageous - like 150-250 Watts idle compared to about 25 Watts idle for a modern system. In a few years the extra electricity cost of running an old system like this can be enough to pay for a newer system.

There's a variety of software to convert a physical drive into a virtual disk, which you can then run under VMWare Player, VirtualBox, or Hyper-V.
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/features/convert-physical-to-virtual.htm
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html
https://hyperv.veeam.com/blog/how-to-convert-physical-machine-hyper-v-virtual-machine-disk2vhd/
 
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Doombot1

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May 25, 2016
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Just making sure - I may not have clarified this enough. I am just going on the drive and copying everything off of it (including the sys files and such) onto a new, completely blank drive - will doing that still not work? (That's not on you - it's on me - I wasn't making much sense)
 
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Solandri

Solandri

Illustrious
Jan 4, 2012
4,919
98
39,240
If you mean you want to run this old version of Windows on a new computer, in my experience about 90% of the time that doesn't work. And the 10% where it does work, it'll be very slow and/or unstable. When you install Windows, it installs drivers and configures itself according to the hardware you have. If you then transplant that image onto a new computer, suddenly the hardware doesn't match the drivers. Sometimes Windows can fall back to generic drivers and make them work with your new hardware, but it'll be slower than native drivers.

If that's your intent, then the virtual machine suggestion I gave above is really your best bet.

If you just want the files from the old drive copied to the new drive so you can access them on your other computer (don't plan to boot the old OS), then yeah copying it will work.
 
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