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
    2019-05-06T23:46:58+00:00

    Jeff,

    This really has nothing to do with your old, dead MAXTOR external hard drive.

    Yes you can use the cheaper cable kit, it is (for your purposes) essentially the same thing but without an enclosure to mount the HDD into. Either way, what you are doing is converting the internal type HDD into an External (portable) HDD that then connects to a device via a USB port (on virtually any device that has USB ports).

    The only PC that you will need to open up to perform the above is the Win 98 pc.

    Either of the driver files will/should fit on a single 3.5" floppy disc (less than 1 MB each).

    Both of the other browser installation file downloads show as 1.5 MB so probably not. (You could try downloading the file first to the PC you're using then compressing it to a ZIP file (using 7-zip or WinZip) and if that then turns out to be 1.4 MB or smaller then copy that to the floppy disc. It would then have to be copied to the WIN 98 PC and then unzipped (extracted) to be used).

    You can try plugging in the Iomega CD-RW  (DVD-ROM) drives (one at a time) to the Win 98 PC and see if it will Plug-N-Play (be recognized, installed, and function).

    -Richard

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-05-06T19:03:03+00:00

    Thanks for your "this is what I would do if I were you" but since I really can't see myself ever wanting another external HDD. I already have this old MAXTOR that I'd bought to use with my Motion Computing LE-1600 Windows XP Red Tablet that is still on my desk too but that got outdated and useless. 

    Since the external HDD case & cables costs about $24 rather than just the $12 I saw earlier for a "powered SATA or PATA cable (I forget)", wouldn't it just be OK for me to just get that powered cable, pull the old pc's HDD out and use that cable to connect it to my Windows 10 pc and grab the files temporarily?

    Would I need to take my Windows 10 pc apart to use either that external case & cable or the powered cable to do that or can they just be plugged into a port on the outside of my new DELL?

    Obviously, I don't have a clue about this stuff nor do I think that I'll ever understand it.

    I seem to remember something being said about using that cable with a Windows XP machine instead for some reason. My memory is that involved me taking both machines apart, something that I'd really like to avoid, if possible.

    Oh, and while I'm tossing stuff out, although you mentioned this in another Reply, the old Dell Dimension sure does have a floppy drive built-in. I'd never even noticed it there under the 2 other disc drives & I'm sure it's "like new".

    So, I guess that does mean that I could go get some floppy discs and burn either just the USB Drive Driver for Window 98 onto it so that I could use a flash drive on the old Windows 98 machine to grab my data, or I could, if needed, also get either or both of those other 2 browsers that are Windows 98 friendly. Would a browser fit onto 1 of those tiny floppy discs?

    While I'm mentioning things to think about, I do have 2 of these barely-used Iomega CD-RW  (DVD-ROM) drives that I'd also bought to use with that Motion tablet since it didn't have any disc drives on it. Who knows if they could just be plugged into that Windows 98 machine or maybe they too would need a driver or software to work?

    Man does that picture ever look weird on a phone but it looks normal in my computer's browser.

    I freaked when I saw it looking like this on my phone but then I used my pc & all is good:

    .

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-05-06T10:27:18+00:00

    Or,

    Does the Win XP machine have a working floppy drive on it? If so you could download the USB driver onto a 3.5" floppy disc and then install it on the Win 98 relic, or even one (or both) of the other two web browsers that work with Win 98 (but are only accessible for download from a HTTPS site) if you prefer instead, or both the driver(s) and the browser(s)?

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