Our server at work is a UNIX SCO system. The motherboard in the server went bad, and since the machine (IBM 300GL) is outdated, the PC repair place can't get a part to fix it. They told us that we can have our hard drive (we need to save the data) moved to a new machine, but they are unsure if moving the hard drive will cause it to crash, like Windows XP does.

Does anyone know if the hard drive will crash if it is moved, or will it be safe?

Thanks

It is highly unlikely putting that hard drive in a new system will allow it to boot properly. The drivers and devices would be all messed up.

Your best bet is to install the same version of Unix on a different system, then attach your hard drive from the dead machine as a 2nd hard drive. That will allow you to copy the data off of it.

I've never used SCO Unix before so I don't know the exact steps. I'm sure your PC repair place won't know it either. You are probably in a situation where you need to hire a consultant with SCO experience for a day or two to set up the new server and copy your data over.

One other possibility is if you have a recent backup tape of that hard drive you could just build a new SCO server and restore your data from the backup. But from the info in your post it sounds like you probably don't have a backup tape to do that.

You can build a Linux kernel, I'm pretty sure, that will support the SCO file system.

Also, see this web discussion.