TOM WALKER wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

RJT>CA> Make an ISO image of the original hard drive then copy that to the
RJT>CA> replacement drive.

RJT>I was actually a little further along than that -- I got as far as
RJT>copying entire contents of that one partition to another drive.  
RJT>But it would't boot So at that point I thought that perhaps trying 
RJT>an fdisk /mbr or similar wou do the trick.  Then I started running 
RJT>into problems with floppies, and similar nonsense.  Eventually it just 
RJT>got to the point where I decided that I didn't need those 
RJT>diagnostics that badly,  and I proceeded from there to a linux 
RJT>install that's mostly complete.

TW>  I thouhgt that was courious as I have never made a Clone/Ghost of
TW> a Win(fat file system) Hard Disk that didn't boot.

But I didn't do that,  I "copied the contents of the partition", 
which you quoted here.  What I didn't copy was the MBR,  which probably
would have helped.  In any case I reached the limit of my patience for
screwing around with it.

TW> Then I rembembered that you were most likely talking about LINUX.

Actually in the case of that partition it said "Loading MS-DOS"
when it was booted.  The rest of that HD booted 98 when the diagnostics
weren't loaded. But yeah,  the end result loads linux.

TW> IF there is not a way then there is another HUGE down side to 
TW> LINUX.

There was probably a way,  I just wasn't into spending much further time
figuring out what it was.  Mostly I thought I was interested in salvaging
that diagnostic partition.  

TW> Do you have to do a total re-install when you go for a Bigger Hard 
TW> Drive?"?

Nope.  But if one has an upgrade sitting here anyway it gives a good excuse
to do the install.  :-)

Unlike certain other platforms,  linux has little or no problem with moving
from one hardware platform to another.  I've done that before.  To simply
move a system to a bigger drive you can do that with no problems.  About
the only software that's dependent on drive geometry and similar issues is
your loader, whether it's LILO or GRUB.  Other hardware is set up,  not
necessarily by being "installed",  but at boot time.

I once took a couple of drives out of one box (a P200 at that time) and
plugged them in to an other box (a 486 at that time) and it booted right
up,  and worked.  Slower,  but it worked...

Try _that_ with any flavor of windoze,  excepting maybe 3.1x...    :-)

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