Transfer Image from dual boot to single OS

Hello ,

I believe this is achievable but not sure just how to obtain it .
What I need to do is to backup a current install of XP which is located on a machine that has two hard drives installed. The first has 98 and the second has XP and was installed in that order. The 98 os is never used and the person has no use for it at all but I believe that is where the MBR is located as it was installed first .I could be wrong, I really don't know, but why I am posting here to confirm.
The end goal is to create an exact image of the XP drive and transfer it to a single drive (new installed upgrade) with this being the sole drive in the machine containing the os and all the other files contained within. I believe I have tried this some time ago without success as I could not get the new configuration to boot receiving a boot error message.

This is actually for my mother I would greatly appreciate any help as most who have elderly parents knows their reluctance for change. This would make her quite happy as it would be a seamless and not a noticeable change just insuring that her aging hard drive does not fail and she loses time and access to her computer while she is down in Florida and I am up north with limited or no access to her computer.

Thanks in advance
Wrath

 

What you want to do is doable. How to actually go about it depends on the present dual booting method and what partitions you have on the two seperate drives.

The end result on the new drive could be a vestigial C drive which will just have the basic Windows boot information ( MBR) and a D drive for the XP installation. This is assuming that neither of the current drives are partitioned to seperate data from the OSs.

I did an exercise very much the same some years ago, dropping off the original Win 98 on one drive and continuing with XP which had started life on another drive.

So to kick off how are the partitions arranged on the two drives or is there just one on for Win 98 and one for XP? Are you also using the Windows dual boot method or a third party booting program?

Xpilot

 

This isn't the sort of thing you do every day but I would

- image both drives to an external

- remove the Win 98 drive

- set the XP drive as Master

- boot an XP CD into the repair console and run FIXBOOT C: followed by FIXMBR

and if that didn't work I would restore my images and come back here.

 

Thanks for your reply !
Yes they are on two separate drives with the first hard drive installed on the machine alone running windows 98. Following the release of windows XP a second hard drive was purchased and installed and windows XP installed on it through using the install disc while in windows 98 creating a dual boot using the windows dual boot method . So either 98 or xp is available to boot to and they are both fully installed operating systems, but the need for 98 is gone and I am installing a new hard drive (larger capacity and new)
as I fear a mechanical failure is inevitable soon as the drive has to be 6 years old.

I will experiment once christmas has past , I have to build a computer for my nephew today (nothing like waiting for the last minute eh). Which reminds me MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE !

Thanks Earthling for your suggestion as I know its possible I just have to find the right sequence of events to make it happen . I am as mentioned above moving the XP OS to a new hard drive but once I figure out the MBR I think I can then move it to the new hard drive .



Thanks again Wrath