Ghost has the ability to access network shares. You won't have any drive size limitations that way.

One option could be to put your HDD into a mobile rack (so you could remove it without opening the PC case), then get a cheap IDE2USB adapter

I think it would be much faster to dump HDD images using modern machines, especially if we're talking about 70-100GB.

I was trying to find a Win98SE compatible NTFS reader but so far with no success

andre_6 wrote on 2022-06-26, 00:31:

I was trying to find a Win98SE compatible NTFS reader but so far with no success

Not freeware but there are a few, I found them to be limited and buggy though

I wouldn't mind to just put an 80GB HDD via IDE into the PC just to copy over the image to it, I've done the same before to extract files from older HDDs, the adapter is a good idea though. I guess it's just a matter of doing so when I have more time, I thought it would be a simpler and quicker of a task but oh well. I could try and reformat an external HDD to FAT32 and test it out, maybe I'll try it as a last quick resort. Finally creating a network seems something I really have to consider too

if you're willing to jump outside of windows/DOS and happen to have enough memory installed, clonezilla is p great

Clearly define what you are trying to achieve though, a backup for a specific hardware configuration is one thing, an image to just load onto any machine is another. In the second instance you'd want to have generic as possible drivers like SVGA video driver, WSS or SB Pro 2.0 sound, NE2000 compatible network etc active.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-06-26, 02:00:

Clearly define what you are trying to achieve though, a backup for a specific hardware configuration is one thing, an image to just load onto any machine is another. In the second instance you'd want to have generic as possible drivers like SVGA video driver, WSS or SB Pro 2.0 sound, NE2000 compatible network etc active.

I'd like to make images for each specific machine in case the HDD goes out, it has happened before

Acronis True Image 7.0 ran on Windows ME, I vaguely remember.
Acronis True Image 9.0, too, I believe.

andre_6 wrote on 2022-06-26, 00:31:

I was trying to find a Win98SE compatible NTFS reader but so far with no success

Paragon offered something like that years ago.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98

The download site is 404, though. Maybe there's a mirror, or a copy at the iNet archive.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-06-26, 06:18:

Paragon offered something like that years ago.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98

The download site is 404, though. Maybe there's a mirror, or a copy at the iNet archive.

There is a mirror, just search for the latest version number of that tool, e.g. "Paragon NTFS Windows 98 v1.7"

Jo22 wrote on 2022-06-26, 06:18:

Paragon offered something like that years ago.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98

The download site is 404, though. Maybe there's a mirror, or a copy at the iNet archive.

Paragon Softare recently open-sourced their NTFS driver for Linux, and it was merged into the mainline kernel. There was some concern over Paragon suddenly going incommunicado after having the driver mainlined, even though they had promised to maintain it going forward. There was some speculation about Paragon possibly having been caught up in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It wasn't until recently that they showed signs of life again. Perhaps their site was temporarily down for similar reasons?

Speculation aside, since Paragon graciously released the source code of their Linux driver, perhaps they could be persuaded to do the same with their Windows 9x driver? It's not like it has any economic value for them anymore. It wouldn't hurt to ask them, right? 🙂

Even if they are still not ready to release the source code of their Windows 98 driver, they could at least still be approached by mail with the request to provide a copy of the closed source driver, since they are now active on the Linux kernel development mailing list again. Or perhaps they can be informed that the download page is returning 404, which they might not currently be aware of.

Don't make things more complicated than necessary. Download v10.4 of Hiren's Boot CD and use Ghost to save an image onto a USB hard drive or across your network.

KT7AGuy wrote on 2022-07-05, 11:13:

Don't make things more complicated than necessary. Download v10.4 of Hiren's Boot CD and use Ghost to save an image onto a USB hard drive or across your network.

Thanks for the tip, I think this will inevitably lead me to just create a network once and for all, didn't truly need it until now but I guess it's time

ghost is the most practical

however it would be fun to treat it almost like an emulator - 'save state' and load the whole thing into memory. not likely at the moment, imagine loading an 80gb hdd into memory 😀