Win98 Setup with Multiple Drives

Edited text of question.

That wouldnt protect you, if win98 faild, you would still have to reinstall all apps, since their reg entries etc etc would still have to be impelemented.

Either get a RAID controller (available for IDE aswell. Use why not use something like ghost to mirror your system to another drive as a backup?

Reject that answer so your question will be in open area. Cause he's a doofus.  You can run 4 IDE devices on your computer.  Someone with more time will explain.

When installing the programs, you usally get a window that gives you the location it is going to be installed to, (usally C:\Program Files\program name) to install it to another HD simply hit the browse option and in the little window with the location , just change the letter to the HD you want to install in, leav the name intact just change the "C" to "D" or whatever.
In case of major failure or a format of "C" drive you will lose the programs in the programs menu but the Data  and program filea are still intact, but in most cases to use the program you will need to reinstall it just remember to install into the same folder as the first time. Everything should work as it did before the "Crash"

Mark, you don't have to go through all that you are proposing, nor do you need to create either a hardware or software raid to accomplish this, and it is easy. I'll glady post the entire procedure for you when this question reopens.
Dennis

Answer didn't satisfy my need and was too vauge.

The above will give you a whole raft of options from a pure recovery from a backup, as well as a clean fresh reinstall of just Win98 or Win98 with your apps, all without the hassle of sitting their for hours each time with all of your disks and CD's.

It takes me less than 20 minutes to restore 17G to a new drive.

I have had my Win system setup this way, for however you may want to create several partitions on the 17Gb drive, to house the mirror backup and so on. I'll illustrate what I did, and maye give you some ideas.  I had a 8.4GbSCSI partions and setup as follows:
c:=2Gb
d:=4.4Gb
during the install process for Windows, i designated C:\windows, as my system directory, if the option was given for program installation I set it up in the D:\Program Files directory, I also created a
D:\My Documents and a D:\WinAnnex directory for incidental system stuff that I prefered having on the 'D' drive, such as my '.pst' file for Exchange, and my address book, and such files. Once the install of Win OS is complete I imediately used a Program from PowerQuest that ships with PartionMagic, called Magic Mover, this program allows you to move a file or directory, and it automatically alters any dependencis to reflect the change. e.g.shortcuts, Run/Programs Menu, registry, ini's, and system files.  I move anything in the 'C:\Program Files directory to the 'D:\Program Files. During or after the install of MS Office you can change the default path to D:\My documents rather than the C:\My documents default...I then run regedit and search for the string 'C:\Program' if it finda and pointers, I chang them to 'D:\Program files' where needed.  I then proceed to install the programs, instead of accepting the default for 'C:\Program files', I just change the 'C' for a 'D' and I'm on my way to installing everything on the D:\ drive. editng of some Win sys files may be needed but this is usually rare.  There are programs on the market that will search for a string within a file so just to stay on the safe side you can search all files on the C:\ drive for remenants of 'C:\Program Files' and change them accordingly. I have found this to work quite well, as long as you regularly backup your sytem files, since most of the data is stored on the 'D' drive the system files basically consists of teh C:\Windows directory, if the drive fails, you simple copy this directory from your backup media, onto your new C:\ drive and your off and running.  Of course you can store the Win98 CAB files from the CD on the D:\ drive rather thatn the standard C:\windows\win98cd dir (my default) and the mount of space needed for backing up your windows directory is not much, even less when ZIpped-up and stored on let's say a ZIP disk.  If you want more specific info just post any questions.

InÐicu§

indicus, that's a nice thought, but if you incur a crash, what have you gained other than preserving your program files and pst files. If you need to do a restore, you'll need to reinstall your apps anyway!

Why would you need to reinstall all the apps if your program are on a D: drive, in my example I set it on a seperate partition, since most crashes are due to Win98, rather thatn hardware, but you can put this same setup on two different drives, if you are regularly backing up your system files, you don't need to reinstall everthing, only what you have changed from the last backup.

Your post made no mention of how you handled the backups, (method used) and what actually was being backed up.

Very detailed answer. I liked Indicus' answer as well, that was more of what I was looking for, but will use both replies in planning my system setup.

I am interested in what files Indicus backs up as I have both a Zip and Tape drive for backup purposes.

Thanks again for your excellent support!

Thanks Mark,

I'd like to urge you though to take a hard look at drive image (and no I don't own the company)

If you backup to a zip or to a tape, you'll need to reinstall 98 in order to access either. With Drive Image, all you need is a new drive to replace the damaged one and the drive image floppies to restore the image created and stored to "D".

Read it again...

I regularly backup everything in the C:\Windows directory, and the windows and DOS files in the root of C:, although most of these are incidentals, like the log files, I back them up as well just so that I can keep previous copies of these logs, if it breaks then I can go back and see if there were any issues logged, that may help prevent it in the future. I prefer not to use the backup that comes with Win98, to flaky, so you can choose one of a myriad of third party software packages that will competently backup your folders, since all programs, other that Windows apps that are installed from the CAB files,  all documents, personal files, data files, MS Outlook, or any other files you want reside on the 'D:' drive, not the 'C' drive, you should have only a couple of folders in the 'C' drive, the main one of interest here is the Windows folders, as long as you backup everything in the C:\Windows folder, you should not have to reinstall anything, prior to your latest backup. You must choose a Backup software that will back up folders, maintaining folder and file structure, also hidden files and folders, read-only files and system files, If you keep a strict policy of only system info on your C:\ drive then dew associates mention of PQ driveimage is a great idea as I also like this software, then you can just make a regular backup of the entire C: drive, to some other media, be it a ZIP drive, another harddrive, or a CDRW, whichis what I prefer.  If the 'C' drive fails, make sure to have a DOS boot disk that will support what ever media you are using, e.g. ZIP, CD-rom.  Then just copy the entire backup back to the new 'C:' drive, and reboot, your up and going, with minimal loss.  Personnaly I think if a system is critical enough do deserve constant backups, then I can afford to put a CDRW onto it and do daily or weekly burns onto a CDRW of the system files. Then I don't need any special hardware support, all I need is a CD-rom driver on the DOS boot disk, which if you make a Emergency disk in Win98 it will add CD-rom support automatically.  don't get me wrong, I really like dew associates input as his suggestion has some advantages, but it is a pain in the !@#...or at least seems that way...after reviewing my own post, I guess mine sounds like a pain also, but it is actually pretty easy.  Please excuse my typing and spelling, I am forcing myself to touch type and so far the keyboard is winning this battle...;)

Thanks to both of you for your great ideas. I have a hot project to finish and then I can get back to building a more secure system, sometime next month.

Thanks again!

Good luck to you Mark!