Disclaimer: WARNING: High Risk Area - Be VERY careful if you
are following this thread. There are MANY different ways to
do what Joan is attempting, and only a certain number will
work for her.
This is VERY hardware/DDO specific. What is "right" in one
situation might be a disaster for someone else.
                  Rick Glazier

Joan Rapier <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>I'm not sure this'll work (creating and booting with DDO boot disk on
>the new machine) as only one of the two hard drives is (possibly) using
a
>DDO.

The chances of a 386 _motherboard_ directly supporting a
1G harddrive are "about" none...  (See more on "cards" later...)
The two most popular DDO programs I have used over the years have
done it _totally_ different, then switched to the same...
(I have not used DiskManager since v7.09full version)

Please let "list" know what name and version DDO you are using.
Also, was "it" a boot drive?, connected to a motherboard, or a "card"?
If a card, which port and bus type card.  Card have a BIOS?
All this makes a big difference.
You will have to put old drive back into old system to get DDO info.

>  The purpose of my putting the drive into the newer system as a slave
>is convenience - to transfer data files to the new drive.  If I'm only
>able to see the older drive, my purpose is defeated and I'm back to
resorting
>to sneaker net.
>
>It may be worth it for me to temporarily drop a NIC in each machine
>and, using a cross-over cable, and txfr the data that way.

How much DATA are we talking about here?...
(This is a REAL important question.)

>Does a DDO show up as a non-DOS partition in a non-native system (one
>other than the system the DDO was performed in)?

When your new machine looks at the drive with no DDO
conversion or translation, it does not "see" a DOS partition.
It only _becomes_ a DOS partition after translation by the DDO.
Which means the DDO must load before the Operating System or
there is no usable DOS partition for that drive.

>Once you've used a DDO, is there no going back?

And still use that data "as is" on that drive? Correct.
The only exception(s) I have seen were in the "old" days
when you would install the DDO and you did not need it.
The modern DDOs I have seen lately will refuse to install
if _totally_ unneeded.
Removing a DDO _totally_ from a drive that needs it and
is using it, is about the same as destroying the partition
table and boot code.
In easy terms, the drive becomes "blank" or inaccessible.
There are qualifications to that, but I am trying to keep this short.

>It looks like the only way I'm going to get away w/ having this older
>drive in the new system is to get rid of the DDO.  Can I do this w/out
>endangering the data on the drive?

See above about winding up with a "blank" drive.
Disclaimer - Again: You are at extreme risk of
loosing all your data when "tinkering with" a DDO.

         Rick Glazier

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