Any Windows 98SE people here able to help me?

[NickZac]

I have a hard drive which is 40port ATA from on an old laptop. I found another old laptop and booted the hard drive on it. The laptop I booted the drive on was an older Compaq Presario 2500, and the laptop it came out of was the worst Dell ever made (the one which in 2004 there was a class action lawsuit over because they were the biggest POS and even caused fires). My ultimate goal is to get information off of that hard drive and onto any medium (external HD, flash mem, DVDR) so I can get the information (only about 7 GB) onto my MBP's external HDD or SSD. Obviously, when booting a different hard drive on the computer, it did not find device drivers and it will search for them and then freeze when booting normally. It will boot up on Safe Mode, but it then seems that I can't get a damned thing off of it and IIRC in 98, USB is disabled in SM. Also, I am not sure if the hard drive AND the different computer are USB 1 or 2 as it is right around the time that it changed. My guess is the HDD is USB1 and the computer is USB2. Any idea what I can do? This is reminding me of my days with a Windows laptop and I am HATING it. Thanks!

 

[jtmx29]

I have a hard drive which is 40port ATA from on an old laptop. I found another old laptop and booted the hard drive on it. The laptop I booted the drive on was an older Compaq Presario 2500, and the laptop it came out of was the worst Dell ever made (the one which in 2004 there was a class action lawsuit over because they were the biggest POS and even caused fires). My ultimate goal is to get information off of that hard drive and onto any medium (external HD, flash mem, DVDR) so I can get the information (only about 7 GB) onto my MBP's external HDD or SSD. Obviously, when booting a different hard drive on the computer, it did not find device drivers and it will search for them and then freeze when booting normally. It will boot up on Safe Mode, but it then seems that I can't get a damned thing off of it and IIRC in 98, USB is disabled in SM. Also, I am not sure if the hard drive AND the different computer are USB 1 or 2 as it is right around the time that it changed. My guess is the HDD is USB1 and the computer is USB2. Any idea what I can do? This is reminding me of my days with a Windows laptop and I am HATING it. Thanks!

So you're trying to boot another computers HDD on your Windows 98 desktop? First off this won't work for many reasons. Mostly due to the fact that drivers will be missing and many root registry tie-ins with the OS. The best bet is to hook it up to another IDE channel and boot into your OS and pull the data off of it. I wouldn't try to boot into the drive because you won't get the results you are looking for.

Also, if you happen to know someone with a USB to IDE/SATA adapter they should be able to pull data off for you rather quickly.

 

[NickZac]

Thanks; I figured the driver issue wasn't going to fly but I decided to be cheap as I know I'll never use the adapter again; I guess I should just go buy an adapter as it is a 40 pin laptop ATE drive, and my desktop only has one 44 pin IDE port. If I go through that mechanism, I should theoretically be able to pull info off the drive onto my MacBook, but not overwrite or change any information on the drive; correct?

 

[jtmx29]

Thanks; I figured the driver issue wasn't going to fly but I decided to be cheap as I know I'll never use the adapter again; I guess I should just go buy an adapter as it is a 40 pin laptop ATE drive, and my desktop only has one 44 pin IDE port. If I go through that mechanism, I should theoretically be able to pull info off the drive onto my MacBook, but not overwrite or change any information on the drive; correct?

Theoretically it should, however, some times things don't work out for the best. Since you are using legacy operating systems you might get mixed results.

 

[NickZac]

TY so much! I got it! While this is a little OT, is there any program equivalent to iStat Pro for windows?

 

[jtmx29]

TY so much! I got it! While this is a little OT, is there any program equivalent to iStat Pro for windows?

I'm not too sure. I assume there probably is but I have no experience with them.

 

[balamw]

I'm not too sure. I assume there probably is but I have no experience with them.

Maybe something like Cpu-Z would do the trick?

FWIW, I'd take this and virtualize it instead. You can convert physical raw disks into VMs that Fusion/Parallels/Virtualbox can boot on modern hardware. You may have similar issues at first, but ultimately you'll have something portable.

B

 

[jtmx29]

Maybe something like Cpu-Z would do the trick?

FWIW, I'd take this and virtualize it instead. You can convert physical raw disks into VMs that Fusion/Parallels/Virtualbox can boot on modern hardware. You may have similar issues at first, but ultimately you'll have something portable.

B

Good advice. CPU-Z would probably fit his needs, however, I thought he might have been requesting an app that reports it versus having to open CPU-Z each time.

I know there's a Windows scripting program Samurize that can create custom scripts on your desktop and report the weather, fan speed, and much more.