Hi all I have a damaged harddrive with many bad sectors. ANyway is there any way to ghost or mirror the drive as everything works well. Having a bugger of a time to get the reinstall CD's to install so copy of the old drive is the way to go but the software I tried freaks at the conditions of the old HD any suggestions for rescue software

I wouldn't recommend that method. You are just asking for problems. What kind of problems are you having installing to the new drive. If you are attempting an install while the old disk is set as the primary master disk you may have problems. I would suggest that you obtain copies of all drivers necassary to reinstall all of your hardware and place them in a temp file on the existing HDrive. Be sure to have a windows boot disk with copy from CD capability if your BIOS doesn't allow booting from the CDrom. Now reconfigure your HDs. New drive jumpered and cabled as primary master. CD, primary slave, Old drive secondary master. Boot to command prompt only off the floppy. Fdisk the new drive to create desired partitions. (see radified.com for partitioning strategies) Verify with fdisk that both drives are visible. Reboot to the floppy again and install windows. When prompted for drivers, set the complete path to the needed driver in the temp file on the old drive. You know what to do with the rest.

I agree with Otherhill. A copy of the old failing drive is definetly not the way to go. Install the new drive, install win98 , install the old drive on the secondary channel and then rescue whatever data you can from it.

Thanks... I wish there was another way but I'll just have to call compaq.... I tried it your way in the first place and the recovery disks reinstalled window etc but it got stuck on the registering part.

I now know about mirroring but are there any good file copying programs I could used to prevent my troubles?

Compaq has a utility on their web site that you have to use when replacing a hard drive.

File copying programs can only copy what is there. They can't determine if a file is good or bad. If you really want to make an image of your old drive use Ghost. You can purchase Ghost as part of Norton Systemworks Pro 2003. This suite of apps includes one year of live virus defination updates plus lots of other programs like norton Utilities, go back, cleansweep and 3 or 4 others. If you alredy use norton live update you can wait to install that portion of the software until needed. You can buy it at softwarenevada.com for $14.95 plus $3.95 shipping per order. Not per disk. I have personally bought this disk from them and it came in just a few days by way of the post office. By the way, the fact that you don't have an installation disk is one of the reasons these box computer companies can sell for the prices they do. I was just trying to help someone here yesterday with an IBM machine. His machine has an oddball chipset on theMB and neither he or I could find the prober drivers for it. IMB was of no help. If you do buy An upgrade OS and install it on one of these machines, sometimes there aren't any drivers available for that OS, or they won't bother trying to help you with the drivers. Sorry for the rant. I just think it is shameful that you own a license for win98 but can't install it.

Just connect the drive as Slave on a different computer and save your personal files and documents on CD. The copy your documents from the CD to your new drive. Couldn't be easier.

You'll have to re-install the operating system, software, and drivers. That's best anyway.

If the software you've tried so far balks at the hard drive's condition, the 'ghost' or hard drive copy software may not work either.

Also note, do not continue to use that hard drive. Bad sectors "spread" as the loose surface particles make the drive head jump and crash, creating even more bad sectors. Save the drive until you're ready to salvage those files.

I'm not convinced anyone at Compaq can help you more than we already have. You ~can~ send the hard drive off for data recovery, but it's rather expensive.

Best Luck,
Bob