Making ghost image of OS/2 hard drive

[Eric Sooy]

I'm trying to clone the OS/2 hard drive on my machine. I did it using Acronis Trueimage, but the new drive hangs up at the OS/2 splash screen.

Any successes out there? What clone software did you use?

Thanks

[Ryan Callahan]

Eric,

What size was the old hard drive, and the new one? Are they the same or different.

OS/2 had some size points that are difficult to cross without doing a fresh install. For example, to get larger than 2GB, the file system had to be upgraded from FAT to HPFS. Larger than about 8GB, settings on the motherboard had to be set differently or not supported at all.

So there are many things that can prevent this from working. I have not actually tried this myself, but I have talked to other customers that have had luck doing just what you are trying. Maybe one of them can give some additional pointers.

Here is what I would try though, especially if the drives are not exactly the same:

• Be sure that the copy program understands OS/2 and HPFS drives.
• Make the image of the full drive
• Restore only the first partition. Usually 2GB or less and formatted FAT.
• DO NOT CHANGE THE SIZE OF THIS no matter what.
• Restore the second partition if it exists. Again, I would not allow it to resize.
• Make sure that the first partition is set a Primary and Active when finished.
• Be sure to test the new drive before calling it good!
  

Should this work, you can go back and try to resize just so that you can use the full space on the new drive.

With any luck, this will work and you will have a good backup.

Be sure to let everyone know how things turned out. Good luck.

[Dean Fehribach]

I can add a couple caveats to Ryan's posting.

Some motherboards of the day (remember, we're talking OS/2 days here) had a maximum disk drive size capability. Some motherboards it was 8GB, some 20GB, and some 137GB. I can virtually guarantee that you would not be able to use a drive bigger than 137GB in an OS/2 system and the vast majority wouldn't support a drive bigger than 20GB. Even if you don't resize the OS/2 partitions and still want to use a newer, larger hard drive, it won't work.

Ryan also pointed out about resizing of the partitions. I have to agree with him here, you shouldn't resize the partitions at all.

With OS/2, you're just best with using the same size hard drive, be it 6GB, 8GB, 10GB, etc. I know they're hard to come by.

[Eric Sooy]

Ok, thanks. I have a sneaking suspicion it might have something to do with the vastly different drive sizes. I tried it with 160gb. I will hunt down a smaller drive and pay attention to the partition sizes too. I know you guys keep images of our disks there, which is awesome, but it would be nice to have an instant swap out drive for this one which is pushing 10 years old!

[Carl Jones]

Hi Eric, if you are interested in a replacement or spare drive, we can make one up for you. Just call in to the service department 1-800-221-3865. All that we would need is the machine serial # to ensure that we have the correct files loaded. Thanks