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Drive size barriers

(5 posts)
  • Started 4 years ago by Munden
  • Latest reply from Munden
  • Topic Viewed 829 times

Munden
Posts: 6

I'm curious if a Win98 machine can simply read a 120GB drive. I don't need to format or use any other tools on the drive, I just need to pull files off of it.

Just recently my most recent system collapsed. It was an OS issue, I'm certain something to do with the registry and collisions with monitor programs. The end result was that I couldn't even boot up into Safe Mode nor could I boot from CD. The system is 6 years old, and I'd never tried that so I'm not sure it ever could.

I have data on the old drives I'd like to recover. I have a Win98 box that's still running fine and I THINK that I can install these drives into it and copy important files to my new machine. Once that's done I plan to install a new OS on the 'dead' box and get it running again.

Reading about the disk barriers seems to imply that I should be fine as long as I don't need to use Win98 tools on it, which I don't. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks very much for any help.

Posted 4 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

What you could alternatively do is use an Ubuntu LiveCD to boot up (on any machine), and access the drives, and then copy them over the network to your new computer. The drives should show up on your desktop as icons, and you can use the Connect feature on the menu bar to "map" a drive to the new box. (make sure that you share a folder on the new computer)

I'm actually not sure if Win98 can see large drives or not, it's been so long since I've used that version.

Posted 4 years ago #
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Munden
Posts: 6

It's the "on any machine" that causes problems. :( I tried to do a boot up on the old machine from a CD and couldn't get it to work. I tried using Knoppix and not Ubuntu, but it should've been ok. I don't know if this old Win98 can boot from a CD or not. I think it was built in 1999 or 2000.

Is there a way to boot from a floppy and then access the CD drive from there to initiate a Linux boot?

Posted 4 years ago #
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Lighthouse
Lighthouse
Posts: 13598

As for Win98 seeing large drives. Originally they could read 64GB drives. MS then put out a patch to take that to 127GB.
But it also depends on the M/B as to what the BIOS could support.

Posted 4 years ago #
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Munden
Posts: 6

Well, I might give it a try sometime then. I'm more tempted to pick up another 120GB drive and see if I can get the machine that went down to boot from the CD with nothing but a blank drive in it. If I can do that, then I can get Linux going on it and then reinstall the other two drives and access them that way. I'd worry about putting them in the Win98 machine only to have it mess them up because the BIOS couldn't deal with them.

Posted 4 years ago #
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