Can I have help moving data from an old Windows 98 desktop PC to my new Windows 10 PC?

Anonymous
2019-04-29T19:48:42+00:00

I've got this really old Gateway desktop PC that started life as a Windows 95 or earlier (I forget) that I'm wanting to get rid of. It's been sitting unused forever and I disconnected it from my home network years ago when I needed more places to plug stuff into my router since I have 2 Windows XP machines & 2 Windows 10 machines on it.

That old Gateway PC has a 3-1/2" floppy drive that I don't have any discs for and never will, along with a CD drive, a DVD drive and I just discovered that it even has 2 USB ports on the back that I never knew existed.

I've tried endlessly to save the 500mb of Photos and Docs on it onto either a CD or DVD but from all I can tell, they both must be broken or at least maybe the formatting of the discs that I do in a drive on my Windows 10 DELL isn't correct.

Heck, during the formatting process, I even thought that since I'm wanting to use the CD in that old beast Gateway thing, I should set the File System setting from UDF 2.01 (Default) to UDF 1.50, thinking I should use the oldest one it had.

Nothing has worked and I've tried reformatting & Copy/Pasting a bunch of times.

Oddly, it will seem like it is writing to a CD and it shows it stepping thru the Videos, Photos and Docs, but I'll always keep hearing the drive's motor start & stop every 5 or 10 seconds & then if I wait long enough, it does finally show all of the files.

But it's totally weird that if I put another blank CD in that same drive, it shows as if all those same files are on it too.

Weird. That must be some flaw in that old Windows 98 Operating System I guess.

I'd at first tried sticking a USB adapter with a flash card in, thinking that would be super quick. But, it wasn't recognized and something told me that it needed a driver, which isn't possible to get on that PC since it isn't connected anymore to the internet.

So, sorry about all this talk but after spending countless hours, I've concluded that it might be best & easiest to just bring that old PC into my home office & park it next to this Windows 10 DELL Inspirion, hook them together somehow directly with a USB cable instead of thru the router, and then maybe I could just access the old PC's drive and Copy my data off of it.

After all, then I can either burn it onto a tiny flash card or just let it stay on my D: hard drive on this where all of my data is. My C: with Windows & my programs is an SSD to make it super fast.

So, I've rambled on but I do need some basic help in knowing that the old hard drive will be able to be accessed by my new PC if I just connect them with a USB cable or will I need to have a keyboard, mouse and monitor on the old PC too?

I've put this in Windows > Windows 10 > Files, Folders & Storage but if an Admin thinks it should somewhere else, please feel free to move it. Thanks for any help. :-)

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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Anonymous
2019-05-09T00:37:19+00:00

Did you chose the correct USB drivers for your edition of Win 98?

http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php

You stated earlier that the USB driver that you chose (downloaded) is nusb33e.exe. This is for Windows 98SE (Second Edition).

If this is the correct selection for your edition of Win 98 did you follow the installation instructions (found on the download page)?

http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/win98se-usb-mass-storage-drivers.php

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Anonymous
2019-05-08T03:47:50+00:00

First of all, what drive on the device is the drive letter E: associated with?

Why did you do both at the same time (one at a time is best practice, especially on and old outdated OS that is no longer supported (nor able to be updated past were it was when you stopped using it or updating it when updates were still available)).

At this point try shutting down then unplug the CD drive and the thumb drive then startup the device, then do a restart and give it 10 or fifteen minutes to stabilize, then plugin one of the (either the CD drive or the thumb drive, your choice) peripherals then let me know what happens. What do you then see in My Computer, System properties (Device Manager?) etc..

Let me know.

-Richard

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-05-01T02:34:44+00:00

    If you can boot the Windows 98 machine, open My Computer

    Right click the Local drive C:\

    Click Properties

    It should tell you if the file system is FAT32

    If its FAT32 then proceed to format the thumb drive as FAT32 on Windows 10.

    Windows 98 should be able to read FAT32 though.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-04-30T23:09:13+00:00

    Thanks to all 3 of you for jumping in to help me. I really appreciate your time & effort. I've got to say that it's tricky deciding what is best to do, as you've each told me some different ideas. I know so little about all of this that I’d like to try what sounds simplest, cheapest, fastest & easiest and work up from there if that doesn't do it.

    I hope you're all onboard with that thinking. In taking in everything you've all said and evaluating it with my knowledge & limited experience, I think I’ve come up with the order that I should try things you 3 have said. Please feel free to offer guidance if any of this seems wrong.

    1. USB DRIVE FORMAT & COPY MY DATA – I’m such a dumbo. I’d stuck a USB > Micro SD card Adapter into to USB port drive thinking that the Adapter was an SD card. So, it had no card to be Recognized or Written to. After figuring that out, I just stuck a real 32gb USB 2.0 thumbdrive into my Windows 10 pc and the Format option offers to format in 3 different formats, NFTS, FAT32 or exFAT I’d had a note with that drive that I’d written to myself a long time ago saying that I’d formatted this one using NFTS since that would allow it to store larger files. That was when I was doing some other project that needed that. I’d assume by what was said here by Andre that I should format a thumbdrive in FAT, that FAT32 is the same thing but I don't want to be guessing on important stuff. I have a tendency to do that & think that I can figure things out better than by reading an Owner’s Manual that was so poorly translated that it’s barely readable. I think that USB drives are usually just been Plug ‘n Play deals in my Windows 7, 8 & 10 computers so people don’t get into the habit of knowing to format them like we did back in the CD and DVD days. So, I really, really appreciate that suggestion to format a USB thumb drive since that sounds like it will be a really easy deal. When I go to format it, would it be best to do it in a Windows XP or Windows 10 PC? Since Andre said to format it in FAT, will that then work to let it just be Pasted to on the Windows 98 machine and then later used in my new Windows 10s machines?
    2. NETWORK - This old PC was on my home network ling ago & the network cable still runs up thru the attic to it. I'd just unplugged it from the router 10+ years ago when I needed the routers 4 ports for other stuff. I could plug it in & reconfigure the network if needed, or maybe it would need to be reconfigured and I could instantly just access that old PC from my other ones? That would be too cool & easy.
    3. PUT DRIVE IN MY OLD DELL WINDOWS XP MACHINE – Since Igor Leyko said that it will probably have PATA connectors and I'd be able to just attach the old drive directly into it. This sounds relatively easy but since it involves taking apart 2 desktop boxes, I’d rather not do this. I don’t really have any good workspaces to do things like that either.
    4. REMOVE HDD & GET A SATA CABLE - Hopefully it won't be necessary to take this step to remove the HDD and get a powered SATA cable and go thru all of the steps & buy stuff to do this. Since this will just be a one-time deal for me and I won't have any need to keep those parts after I grab my data and then put the computer back together to give it away at a local electronics recycling day event that I've seen signs for all the time here in southern California, I'd sure like to avoid buying stuff if I can.

    Anyway, I'll wait for a Reply on my questions above in this Reply.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-04-30T23:07:36+00:00

    Thanks for your help. Since I got Replies from 3 people who have some different input, I’ll try to focus things since I'm really working outside my area of expertise.

    Just in case you aren't Subscribed to all Replies in this thread, could you please look at my Reply to Andre and add in anything you think might help me from what I've laid out there as my plan?

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