Unable to manage an old disk

  • Thread starter Thread starter GRL
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G

GRL

I've bought a converter IDE/SATA-USB for being able to read with my actual
PC (WinXPHE SP2) two disks that I had on an old PC running with Win98SE. I
can read the first disk perfectly. The second one is recognized by my system
I see it when I want to unmount this virtual USB device), but my PC seems
unable to assign a logical drive letter to this disk, so I can't read it.
Now I reminded that perhaps I compressed this disk under Win98SE and
therefore my system is unable to manage it. Is this reasonable? Can I do
something?
Thanks.
Giovanni
 
I've bought a converter IDE/SATA-USB for being able to read with my actual
PC (WinXPHE SP2) two disks that I had on an old PC running with Win98SE. I
can read the first disk perfectly. The second one is recognized by my system
I see it when I want to unmount this virtual USB device), but my PC seems
unable to assign a logical drive letter to this disk, so I can't read it.
Now I reminded that perhaps I compressed this disk under Win98SE and
therefore my system is unable to manage it. Is this reasonable? Can I do
something?
Click to expand...

Well, given Win 98SE, the drive is probably FAT32.
That excludes it from being compressed :-)

First thing I would advise is, to test the various HD settings:
master, slave, cable select.
See if any of these settings gets your drive readble.
 
Gerard Bok said:
Well, given Win 98SE, the drive is probably FAT32.
That excludes it from being compressed :-)

First thing I would advise is, to test the various HD settings:
master, slave, cable select.
See if any of these settings gets your drive readble.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Of course, I checked (many times) the settings: they seem ok (the
disk must be set master and no cable select, as usual for these IDE/SATA-USB
solutions), so I can't understand the different results for the two disks.
G.
 
Is it possible that your second drive is / was running something
like Maxblast ? (A program that hides the actual geographics of
the drive, in order to make it compatible with unsupportive
motherboards.)
 
Gerard Bok said:
Is it possible that your second drive is / was running something
like Maxblast ? (A program that hides the actual geographics of
the drive, in order to make it compatible with unsupportive
motherboards.)
Click to expand...

No specific program. What I believed to remember was just a compression by
the OS. Are you sure that win98 had no compression method to gain space on a
disk?
Thanks again.
Giovanni
 
GRL said:
No specific program. What I believed to remember was just a compression by
the OS. Are you sure that win98 had no compression method to gain space on a
disk?
Thanks again.
Giovanni
Click to expand...
Even DOS 6.2X had disk compression. It was
some software in config.sys, turning the real drive
into H: and produce a virtual???? disk C: .
Could have been done even to a WIN95/98 drive.
 
GRL said:
.... snip ...

No specific program. What I believed to remember was just a
compression by the OS. Are you sure that win98 had no compression
method to gain space on a disk?
Click to expand...

Not FAT32 partitions, but FAT16 partitions could be compressed.
 
CBFalconer said:
Not FAT32 partitions, but FAT16 partitions could be compressed.
Click to expand...
So, to return to my original question and assuming that my disk is a win98
compressed fat16 one, is there a way to read it under XP?
Thanks to all.
Giovanni
 
So, to return to my original question and assuming that my disk is a win98
compressed fat16 one, is there a way to read it under XP?
Click to expand...

Two-fold answer :-)
If your drive is indeed a compressed fat16 one, you can 'see' a
single big file (and some smaller files as well, if memory serves
me) when accessing it from XP.
That single big file is a container for the compressed files.

I am not aware of any way to read the files inside the container
under XP. (But that by no means means that it is not possible :-)

If you need to read a compressed file, I suggest booting from a
dos 6.2 boot floppy. (www.bootdisk.com if you don't have one.)
 
GRL said:
So, to return to my original question and assuming that my disk is
a win98 compressed fat16 one, is there a way to read it under XP?
Click to expand...

Please snip sig. lines from your replies. Those are everything
that follows a "-- " sig marker.

I have no idea whether or not WinXP includes the modules for
handling compressed disks. I will not allow it, or its successors,
on my machines, due to the impossible EULA and other iniquities.
You would be better off asking on a newsgroup with Windows or
Microsoft in its name. You appear to be caught up in the usual
Microsoft incompatibilities with older software, which is designed
to increase the sales of buggy and vulnerable software.

I advise you to recover your files with older MS systems, and then
move them to a Linux system. You will improve reliability and
performance.
 
So, to return to my original question and assuming that my disk is a win98
compressed fat16 one, is there a way to read it under XP?
Thanks to all.
Giovanni
Click to expand...

What size is the drive? The curious part is that win98SE,
that era of system would have a drive larger than 2GB, but
2GB was the max size a FAT16 partition could be.

There is no way to read it under XP that I'm aware of, but
I've never Google searched for a way either... which you
might do if you hadn't already.

If the XP system has any FAT32 partitions on it, you might
boot the system to DOS with a Win98SE boot floppy and copy
off the data. The other obvious alternative is to put the
drive back in the Win98SE system, or boot that XP system to
that drive instead of to XP- since win98se, unlike XP, can
pretty painlessly plug-n-play new hardware with minor
exceptions like some aux. feature cards (sound, for example)
that may not have XP drivers... though most do except the
very newest, it's just a matter of hunting them down even if
not officially "supported". Once the system had booted 98SE
you merely need be able to output the files to *something*,
if you only had NTFS filesystems in use on XP then I'd
presume it would be a removable media else copied off over a
lan.
 
kony said:
What size is the drive? The curious part is that win98SE,
that era of system would have a drive larger than 2GB, but
2GB was the max size a FAT16 partition could be.

There is no way to read it under XP that I'm aware of, but
I've never Google searched for a way either... which you
might do if you hadn't already.

If the XP system has any FAT32 partitions on it, you might
boot the system to DOS with a Win98SE boot floppy and copy
off the data. The other obvious alternative is to put the
drive back in the Win98SE system, or boot that XP system to
that drive instead of to XP- since win98se, unlike XP, can
pretty painlessly plug-n-play new hardware with minor
exceptions like some aux. feature cards (sound, for example)
that may not have XP drivers... though most do except the
very newest, it's just a matter of hunting them down even if
not officially "supported". Once the system had booted 98SE
you merely need be able to output the files to *something*,
if you only had NTFS filesystems in use on XP then I'd
presume it would be a removable media else copied off over a
lan.
Click to expand...
Thanks, but now I've another problem: my laptop doesn't have a FD, only
using an external drive by means of a USB connection I can add a FD. But in
this case, I'm not able to boot from it. So, I need to boot win98SE from a
CD, but I don't find an iso image to burn a CD from.
Giovanni
 
GRL said:
Thanks, but now I've another problem: my laptop doesn't have a FD, only
using an external drive by means of a USB connection I can add a FD. But in
this case, I'm not able to boot from it. So, I need to boot win98SE from a
CD, but I don't find an iso image to burn a CD from.
Click to expand...

If you have a Windows 98SE installer (non-boot) and Nero, you can easily
make a bootable disc. You can find a bootable floppy disk image at
http://bootdisk.com/ In Nero (and perhaps other disc burners,) create a
boot disc, specifying the floppy as your boot image. Then, just add the
files from the Windows 98 installer to the data track.

Perhaps you can get this all accomplished on a friends computer so that
you won't have to shell out for an external floppy drive?
 
Grinder said:
If you have a Windows 98SE installer (non-boot) and Nero, you can easily
make a bootable disc. You can find a bootable floppy disk image at
http://bootdisk.com/ In Nero (and perhaps other disc burners,) create a
boot disc, specifying the floppy as your boot image. Then, just add the
files from the Windows 98 installer to the data track.

Perhaps you can get this all accomplished on a friends computer so that
you won't have to shell out for an external floppy drive?
Click to expand...
Thanks; yes, maybe it's much simpler to look for an old win98 PC.
Giovanni
 
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