Computer Hope

Complete idiot when it comes to computers. I could use some simple instructions to clone my hard drive or any other suggestions to accomplish what I am trying to do.

I've got a WIN98 PC that is running software for our engraving machine that we run every day. The maker of the software stopped supporting this version long ago and is no longer providing support including supplying unlock codes for reinstallation if that becomes necessary. They're happy to sell me a $5000 upgrade so I could run the engraver on a WIN10 machine but that doesn't appeal to me.

I hear that a way around this problem would be to clone the hard drive so if I have to reinstall the software, I could switch to the cloned hard drive without needing an unlock code.

I'm not clear if only the software can be cloned or if the whole drive has to be cloned. As far as I can tell from my research so far, cloning a hard drive would wipe out whatever was on the drive previously.

This PC is not connected to the internet and my theory is that this is why it has stayed alive for so long. I have a CD/DVD drive but no floppy drive.

I have 2 hard drives in this PC and one is being used for a backup of the current drive. I see that there is an SSD available for WIN98 PCs now (that I assume plugs into the motherboard) so I would like to get to the point where the machine is run from the SSD drive, the backup is done to an SSD drive and the cloned hard drive resides on a 3rd SSD that would be stored out of the PC. This assume that both 2 active SSD's can be installed at the same time. Presumably, doing so would protect us forever from a catastrophic hard drive failure.

Can anyone give me recommendations - including software required - to do this?

I would need instructions that are for the average dum-dum, btw.

First we need to know how large the present hard drive, is to get this information in windows explorer, right mouse click on the c drive and select properties it is likely about 40 MB.

The easiest way would be to get a tech with a computer which supports IDE drives to make some self booting recovery CD's. I use an older version of Paragon disk manger like version 8 to achieve this.

There is the option of using compact flash cards as a replacement for ide drives. Remember to get 2 GB compact cards as larger ones are sometimes problematic with windows 98 .
Here is a utube video of installing one           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1_40O4sKpc

With reliable older computers getting rare now would be a good time to source a spare, get it setup and tested working with the engraver.