Upgraded the HDD on my 3rd PC (the oldest of my PCs). The PC originally had a 80 GB Excelstor drive which seems to be on it’s way to death (slow speed and relocated sectors) and a VERY old 13GB Quantum Fireball. Replaced both of these HDDs with a 500GB Seagate (had to jumper it to sata 1, because the crappy VIA chipset (the PC uses a Epox Socket A MB with VIA chipset) refused to see the drive otherwise).

I’ve imaged both old HDDs (using my secondary PC) and wrote both HDD images to the new HDD and just formated the remaining space as a NTFS partition. No Windows reinstall needed, PC boots fine.

Just another happy ending. Old hdds now move to my hardware archive. I hope the new HDD will last.