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audiowkstation 4 September 2001

Well I have done it now.

Last night I was screwing around with a utility that finds and deletes duplicate files.

Guess what...Erased part of the op system and that hard drive will not boot. Not even with a boot disk.

Ok...good news..

Some background..

My Main drive is a 60Gig. Call it "C" new.
My Aux drive is a 75Gig. Call it "D".
My Old drive is a little 4.3 gig that I left intact and unplugged and put in the box. Call it "C" old.

C New had the op system on it and it is the one that is fubar. It has all my programs on it...emails, email addresses (Since Dec2000) and every possible thing I have done as far as correspondence since Dec 2000. All my pictures with the digital camera...you get the Picture. About 20 gigs worth on it.

D, where most of my wav. files..music files etc are stored is intact. Works fine..but no op system. All is not lost!

C old is what I am using now. It is amazing how much I have done since December. This is a dinosaur compared to the progress since then. I plugged it in and I am back to December 5, 2000.

Ok...Their is a lot of stuff on new C that I need really badly.

My options as I see it:

1. Wipe the drive clean, copy old C to it...start over. I will have about 800Megs of downloads to do just to reconfigure hardware, drivers, etc...take weeks...lose all the pictures, etc..Gone for good.

2. (Here is where I need help)
Pull D out. Install new C as D. Boot system with old C, try to copy files from New C (now d) to CDR's and save. reformat the drive and copy Old C top it. Update everything to new standard and load CDR's of files into New C again and be closer, faster than starting over.

Can this work? Will the remnants of the ME system (old C has windows 98) interfere with being able to access the drive and pull files?

As is..in order to use my hardware with Old C, I am having to do 130 megs of drivers and updates just to configure the SCSI and the new sound card, new modem...all the hardware..CDR programs...etc..

I do have my huge tower for storage only...but key info like emails, correspondence, vacation pictures, presets, Direct X, all my hundreds of plugins...many that I cannot find all the disc...downloaded programs...etc..

A friggin nightmare.

Please fill me in on what you would do.

Bootdisk did not work on New C...too much missing.

I am going to be at this a while.

Comments

Opus2000 Tue, 09/04/2001 - 06:27

The big DOH goes out to you on that one Bill!!!
Oh boy...well, if you are running WinME you cant boot off of the CD like you can with 98SE..I cant believe they changed that..you could do this tho I'm not positive it will work..it might be worth it as this way you wont have to lose any data whatsoever!!! And no formating of drives too!
Put Win98SE disk into CDROM..go into your BIOS and tell it to boot from CDROM..when it prompts you say start with CDROM support..once it goes thru it's paces and says CDROM is letter E or whatever it feels like giving it take the 98 CD out and put in ME! type DIR and then setup..install on top of new C drive and it will install with all the apps sand drivers and pictures still there when it finishes..it will not erase anything on that drive! it will only reinstall windows to where it seems like a new install but it isnt! Tricky aint it!!
Hopefully that will work..if not..this is what you do..before you take D drive out do this..do you have Symantic Ghost or any type of drive imager? If so make a ghost image of the old C drive and put it on D...take D out once it has been done. put new C in place of D to back up any files you need backed up before reformatting it. Format it and take old c out and put new c in place and put d back in...now, boot up in dos mode and run imager program again and extract image to c from d...this is the best way to copy an os system to another drive..this is truly the only way that it will work properly..hopefully the first suggestion I gave you will work and you wont have to format the drive..any way let me know if you have any q's andif it worked or not
Opus

audiowkstation Tue, 09/04/2001 - 19:13

UPDATE!

So I am pushing 35 hours here...Should just get some rest and come back to it.

Here is the progress (or lack of, I have made)

Took New C and installed (the fubar one) and installed it as slave.

Took Old C (4.3G) and used it's good op system to copy files from New C to CDR's. 49 damn gigs of them...

I formatted New C (!)
I copyied Old C to new C.

New C will now not boot up. I have a startup disc. I DO NOT have a restore disc or an op system disc.. (don't load stuff out folks)

I had to put Old C back in to type this.

It loads up and gives a C: prompt. I tried typing:

AutoExec.bat
Extract.exe
Findramd.exe
IO.sys
Scandisk/mount C:
Scandisk/all
CHKDSC.exe
Sys C:

Nothing will work.

It is supposed to be an exact clone of the disc HD Im using now.

All Jumpers are in the proper postion.

Whaaaaatttttzzzzzzzuuuuppppp???

Any ideas appreciated.

Maybe I can get it all back.

(got my sound drivers working!)

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