Korean Job Discussion Forums

moosehead · Joined: 05 May 2007

this is a q for a very dear friend who is in a bit of a bind - he has a very old machine and isn't all that tech savvy - plus he's not rich either - even if he buys a new machine he needs to get his data off the old one.

he says he can't buy an external drive because his machine can't meet the requirements of any of them that are on the boxes.

He's running Win 95 and he does have a USB port, that much I know. I'm thinking his machine might be running on a FAT 16 allocation vs. the FAT 32, which new drives use and that's why he can't buy a new one because they are incompatible.

any ideas ? he'd like to be able to back up the entire drive, for one reason, his word processing software is on there and he doesn't have the licensing numbers since the machine was given to him and the software was already loaded.

is it possible to find an external for a machine that old?

I'll do some looking on external sites but anyone else that's dealt with this and has some input, I certainly do appreciate it - very much. if you're in Seoul, I'll even buy you a beer (or two!) - let me know.

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

You could pull the hard drive and hook it up to the motherboard inside of the new machine. It will show up as an icon in Windows with the other drives. Or you could buy an external box for about 40,000 or so, and plug that in via USB.

Assuming his software imbeds itself into windows like Microsoft Word does, he'll be SOL on the word processing software, though. He'll only be able to pull the data and other files from the old drive if it's put into/USB'd into a new machine.

OneWayTraffic · Joined: 14 Mar 2005

If he's got a USB port then a USB drive is pretty cheap. They're all backwards compatible. Even an external HDD should work, though it may not go at full speed.

Second option is email them onto the Internet if it's connected.

Third option is to use floppies. This can be an issue as newer computers often don't have floppy drives anymore.

Fourth option is to open his box and plug the drive into the newer computer's m/b as mentioned above. This will work.

moosehead · Joined: 05 May 2007

thanks fellows!

I'll pass it on - think I'm gonna pick him up an external and send it on - I also believe it will work.

PeteJB · Joined: 06 Jul 2007

If the old machine has a network card he could create a peer to peer link with a new computer.