I have two hdd's in my system; a primary master and a secondary master.

The primary master has my installs of 98se on it: one on the primary C drive, the rest at the beginning of the logicals in the extended partition.

The secondary master is just an extended drive with logicals inside.

My questions:  When I put a new mobo in my box...

1) Can the partitions be left as they are? (no new fdisking)
2) Can the secondary master be left as it is, intact with all the files now on it?
3) Can the partitions on the primary master that DO NOT hold OS's be left intact as they are now, with their files? (I've ported the address book, emails, favorites, and My Docs to one of those partitions)
4) The six 98se installs will need to be redone, right?

I'm thinking that I will only need to do one 98se install... on C drive... make a ghost image when all the basics are on and tweaked... my boot mgr which hides all OS drives not needed can then be installed... and I can use the ghost floppy to put that C image on the five logical drives--reinstalling the various programs on each drive as needed.

Do I have this correct??  Or is there something I'm not thinking of?

Thanks for all your help!  :)

roxe

That all looks about right--as you stated--the only thing you have to do is that first install so Win98se sees all the new stuff and plug-n-plays everything as it should be.

All the non-OS partitions are data partitions, so they will still be readable regardless of the hardware changes.

And, if you are keeping all the partitions as is, and putting the HDD's in the same position on the controllers, then all the drive letter assignments should remain the same.

Oh Wow! NightOwl  :D

You just took a BIG load off my mind  ;D  I was worried that all my files would need to be redone or something... and not looking forward to dealing with stuff that's been accumulating for the past 10 years!!

I really like my boot mgr, cuz when I pick the drive I wish to be active--and hide the others-- then it makes every drive picked a C drive!!  Sure saves lots of time with needing only one OS install after doing new things like this to my box!!

Plus I can port important stuff to what becomes the E drive, so if anything does happen to the C drive, all that stuff doesn't get lost. And I port my temporary internet files to a small D partition and never touch it!  Keeps the C drive from getting so fragmented.

Since using Ghost, Spinrite6, and Partition Table Doctor, my stress on computer stuff sure has leveled out to way low  :D   Now if all the other stress would just do the same...

Thanks for all your help!  8)