Australian PC World - Run Win95 on a new drive

Run Win95 on a new drive

Tip
With disk prices approaching 10 cents a megabyte, upgrading your PC for greater storage capacity makes more sense than ever. But an upgrade can also make Windows 95 run faster. Since Windows 95 churns your disk no matter what you do, a new drive with a low access time (say nine milliseconds or fewer) can make your system considerably more responsive.
The basic rule for buying a new drive is to get one that's bigger than you think you need, works with the adaptor you have (or want), and sells for the best price. The latest drives turn in nearly identical performance whether they use SCSI or EIDE.
A disk upgrade can be as easy as artificial respiration -- out with the bad, in with the good. But often it's a lot more complicated. There are two common troublemakers.
Rebuilding Windows: Most people want to simply move files from their old drive to the new drive.
The tedious way to duplicate your old hard disk is to back up the old drive and restore its files to your new one. A quicker strategy is to install your new drive temporarily as a slave (in an EIDE system) or as SCSI ID 1 (in a SCSI system), xcopy all your files from the old to the new drive, and then reconfigure the new drive as the EIDE master or SCSI ID 0.
Windows 95 won't let you do that, however. The operating system doesn't let you copy its vital parts (such as the Registry). Try duplicating your old disk and booting your PC from it, and your system will likely stare blankly at you for hours. The official Microsoft method of moving Windows 95 to a new disk or system is to reinstall the entire operating system and all your programs. This process ensures that Windows will be properly configured for its new environment.
Microsoft views the extra work as a form of copy protection. You'll see it as a form of idiocy. The best strategy is to meet Microsoft halfway: go ahead and duplicate your disk; then reinstall Windows.
Matching drives: The next most nagging complication occurs when you want your old drive to function with your new one. Will the two co-operate? It depends on your drive interface and the age of the drives.
Will your old IDE drive work with a new EIDE system? Depends on how old it is. An ancient drive may have problems, but any drive old enough to be ornery is small enough to discard -- typically 40Mb to 80Mb. IDE drives work with EIDE adaptors, and EIDE drives work with IDE adaptors, though only at IDE speeds in either case. You'll be happiest if you make your old drive a backup (configured as the slave) and use the new drive (configured as the master) to boot your system and load your programs.
Working with SCSI drives involves much the same procedure. You can plug a SCSI-2 or UltraSCSI drive into any modern SCSI adaptor, though performance may be constrained by the older standard. Wide SCSI drives require a new cable and connection.
To make your new SCSI drive the boot drive, set its SCSI ID to 0. Switch your old drive to 1. Leave your old drive at the end of the SCSI cable, and plug your new drive into the connector in the middle. To terminate the system properly, remove the termination from the new drive.
- Winn L Rosch

Category: Hardware, Win95
Issue: Feb 1997
Pages: 176