Legacy Issue/Cloning Harddrive

godtabh

We had a mighty scare in the office last week.

We have some old school traffic engineering software. Its on a similarly aged PC.

PC wouldnt start last week and we thought we were screwed as we would not have been able to afford the version of the software. Thankfully got it started but we realize now something has to be done.

We cant re install the software as we do not have original disks (could have been floppys!).

I've been asked to buy a new pc and transfer over the software. I was thinking of cloning the hard drive and putting it onto a new hard drive that would go in a new PC.

We have licences for all software that would go from on hard drive to another and once transferred we'd decommission the old pc (hopefully before it decommission itself!)

Any thoughts on how to do this?

bonzodog2

I don't think a straight clone will suit you, I'd suggest a fresh install of something (if its not visible on the net you wouldn't necessarily need anything too uptodate) onto the new machine, then exporting some of the registry from the old PC and importing that to the new, plus copying the program files folders applicable. Different software varies as to how much it uses the registry for installation.

Whats the old OS and machine spec ? Fairly ancient at a guess if you were installing from floppy. Any special hardware requirements ? Does the machine just run the traffic engineering software ?

Torqay

For starters, you can copy the program folder. Then run the program on a another computer. If it is looking for dependencies (usually DLL files), find them on the old machine and copy them into the in the corresponding folder (or the program folder to avoid overwriting new files) on the other PC. This can be a bit tedious, as you will have to do it one by one.

Of course, there is no guarantee that it will work but I have done this a few times and sometimes you get lucky.

Other than that, there are software migration utilities available, that my save your day.

godtabh

It's running XP. I'd say the software originally dated to around 1995.

Will look into the program files/registery

Antar Bolaeisk

bonzodog2 wrote: »

I don't think a straight clone will suit you

A straight clone won't work as the new computer will have entirely different hardware. The first thing I'd do is grab an image of the machine then use a copy of said image for playing with while storing one version somewhere safe (just in case).

Now, with your safe to break/blow-up/destroy version of the image I'd stick it on a secondary drive (disconnect the original drive in the machine), sysprep it with the generalise option, re-image and try to see if that image will boot successfully in the new hardware and that all your required programs will run.

Does the software require interfaces with any specialised hardware? If not you might be able to get away with chucking it on to a virtual machine which could give you a hardware independent solution.

paulheu

If the original XP CD is still available it should be possible to clone the HDD and then boot from the CD to run the repair option. While XP is a bit shaky with this it might work and get you up and running. I'd be willing to help out, PM me if you're interested..

tech

you Aconris with Universal restore this will restore to new hardware you can go from Dell to HP or what ever just give it the storage drivers and so on

Works a treat

ArtyM

A few thoughts...
Check if the program folder on the xp machine is in Program files or simply sitting in a folder directly on the c drive (some older programs were like this). If it is sitting directly on the c drive, you have a much higher chance of being able to simply copy it across, although you may need some additional dll files, as previously mentioned.
On the xp machine it is more than likely installed in the program files folder. On a new machine i.e. Win 7, it would need to go into the program files(x86) folder - as 32bit, this is likely to cause issues.
If you can find an identical machine 2nd hand, in good nick, online it is worth considering and may be a good short term solution.
If you are going the clone route, Acronis with Universal restore is a must. This will get around the hardware differences between the pcs. You will need to reactive Windows and other licensed programs, including Av.
Another option worth looking into is creating a vhd of the machine and loading that on the new machine using a virtualisation software - xp mode on Win 7 pro for example. Use Disk2vhd to create the vhd and load it up in xp mode. If it works, you are laughing.

Good Luck

godtabh

Thanks for all the tips. Will be looking into it in more detail next week