Cloning old hard drive

[quadrplax]

Ok, so here is my situation: I have a really (really) old desktop computer, a Packard Bell 945 (or at least that's what it claims the model number is). It has a 333Mhz obviously single core Processor and 64MB of RAM. The hard drive is a 4GB IDE drive. I would plug it into my not-as-old PC that has IDE connectors, but it doesn't show up for some reason, so that would also be a solution. If that can't work, however, then I need a lightweight version of Linux to run that is compatible with a lightweight disk imaging program. I would prefer a VDI or VMDK. If there is software you know of for Windows 98, that would work too, as long as it meets those processor and RAM requirements. As a test, I was able to boot into PLoP Boot Manager off of a flash drive, which allowed me to boot into Ubuntu's GRUB menu, but from there, regular and recovery mode both crashed to the BiOS. Oh, and this is a one time thing so I don't want to go out and but an IDE to USB adapter or anything like that. Any suggestions? Afteward, I will be doing this with the file: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

Edit: Just found this, looks great except it requires 128MB of RAM

[TheFu]

They sell SATA/IDE--> USB converters for $10-$20. It is worth having 1.

Or try tinycore.

[mips]

What's wrong with dd? Will work on any lightweigh linux distro (usually included by default) and it's also mentioned in that virtualbox guide you linked to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)


Or you could use a livecd called clonezilla which has a ncurses interface.
http://clonezilla.org/


For windows you also get dd & windd,
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
http://sourceforge.net/projects/windd/


To find a lightweight linux look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightwe...x_distribution and click on the options on that page to get more details which would tell you the ram requirements.

Have a look at slitaz, tinycore & alpine, they should all work in 64MB of RAM. Slitaz is really cool and I'll put Tiny core second after slitaz.

[quadrplax]

I'm trying slitaz. I can get to the boot menu, but it seems gets stuck on rootfs4.gz on all boot options. Media Check doesn't say anything is wrong with the file. The light on the flash drive, however I don't know if it's the same type of error in my other post (which is still unsolved). The flash drive I am using does not have the light on unless activity is occuring, so it's not on when I'm in the boot selection menu for example, so that might be the problem.

Edit: just to be sure, I left my signature on by mistake, but obviously it's irrelevant for this topic.

[TheFu]

Booting from USB is a relatively new idea. Not all legacy systems will boot from USB and some that might are very picky about the flash drive. It is much better today, but in 2006, it was hit-or-miss.

[quadrplax]

As I said in the first post, I'm using plop boot manager, not my BIOS's (nonexistent) USB boot option.

[quadrplax]

Bump #1

[sudodus]

Please tell us what you have tried, and what help you want right now

Would you be able to take the drive out of the computer and connect it to another computer?

64 MB RAM is very low today, and you need an extremely light linux version, maybe an old one like DSL.

[quadrplax]

I would plug it into my not-as-old PC that has IDE connectors, but it doesn't show up for some reason

I'm trying slitaz. I can get to the boot menu, but it seems gets stuck on rootfs4.gz on all boot options.

.

[sudodus]

I would plug it into my not-as-old PC that has IDE connectors, but it doesn't show up for some reason

Did you check with terminal window commands, if it was shown as a device (although maybe it was not mounted and therefore not visible in a file browser)?

sudo parted -l

I'm trying slitaz. I can get to the boot menu, but it seems gets stuck on rootfs4.gz on all boot options.

There could be some problems with drivers (or too low RAM). I would try DSL which is based on a very old linux kernel, I think 2.4.