Trying to read an old Windows 3.1 Hard Drive

[scoostraw]

I pulled the hard drive out of my old Windows 3.1 computer with the idea of retrieving some old data off of it.

It is a Western Digital Caviar 2420 425mb drive. I'm using an adapter to plug into my usb port (Toshiba NB505 Netbook running Windows 7).

The drive shows up in Device Manager as: WDC AC24 20H USB Device
Under Properties it says that the device is working properly.
When I first plugged it in, Windows did a driver install and then a subsequent message that the device is available to use.

This all sounds good, but the drive appears in Disk Manager as "Unknown" and "Not Initialized".

What do I do (??)

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello scoostraw mate if you want to get data off that drive use this
BOOTABLE UBUNTU
Make a bootable Ubuntu disk Download Ubuntu Desktop | Download | Ubuntu
Set the BIOS to boot from the optical when the machine boots it will show you a screen with TRY or INSTALL > select TRY not INSTALL
When it is finished - it takes very little time you will get a screen like in the pic .
Open the drive you want > User and dig down until you get to the data / settings you may be able to copy / paste the material you want to an external source or other installed drive doing this.
I am not sure if it will but I have recovered tons of data etc using this method both on "dead" or just plain drives that you cannot get data from using Windows.
Or there is this Emergency Kit - save your files from a dead OS I prefer Ubuntu a tad easier to set up but this does the same thing

You can use a stick if you want but I prefer a disk the choice is yours of course.

 

[scoostraw]

Hello ICIT2LOL thanks for the reply.

My netbook does not have an optical drive, so if I use my USB external drive - do I just select USB in the BIOS as the "drive" to boot from?

 

[Megahertz07]

- Download the Ubuntu iso file.
- Use Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way to create a USB boot able flash disk.
- Boot from the Ubuntu USB boot able flash disk.

 

[scoostraw]

Ahh ok got it. I will try this later today when I am home.

As a related question - I am able to read a Windows 3.1 floppy disk just fine using a USB floppy drive. What is the reason that the hard drive cannot be read the same way via USB?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate as Megahertz has said to do a stick is fine. An alternative of course is to get an external optical drive but that is a by the by.

The hard drive if you were going to read it via USB would need a USB to SATA adaptor and another machine to hook it up to. Your floppy drive I am assuming is an external device.

This way you boot into a Linux based OS it is entirely independent of Windows so the Ubuntu or the other Linux Mint OS just sees your hard drive more or less the way that any computer would see a plugged in external drive as in Windows, and in a way how you see the floppy drive using Windows - if that makes sense.

Just do remember not to INSTALL the Ubuntu OS always the TRY = a handy tool to keep up your sleeve. Of course if you were interested in having a go with Ubuntu you clould always use a spare drive and install it. It is a bit fiddly for me so I have gone with another Linux based OS that is more like Windows.

 

[scoostraw]

The hard drive if you were going to read it via USB would need a USB to SATA adaptor and another machine to hook it up to. Your floppy drive I am assuming is an external device.

Yes that's what I'm using - a SATA to USB adapter with power supply.

This one: Vantec – Vantec SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter - CB-ISATAU2 - 2.5"/3.5"/5.25" SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter

I hope to try this tonight. Thanks again for the help with this.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate yep that model is exactly the same as one that I have and having tried some cheaper Chinese sourced brands would advise anyone to go with this particular brand

 

[scoostraw]

Ok an unexpected fly in the ointment..

For some reason my Toshiba flash-screen is not appearing when I power up. It goes straight to Windows. I have seen this Toshiba screen many many times (where you hold the Fx key to enter setup mode).

Any thoughts on why I'm not seeing it now? And how to get it back?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate now is it absolutely necessary for the Toshiba screen to show? As long as it is booting into Windows I wouldn't be worrying too much.

Now of I am not very much mistaken the splash screen is usually turned off in the BIOS if you so want. I take it you have not done anything like that in the BIOS?

Plus is this the first time it has done this if so just try a reboot.

Just a by the by that model I see comes with a mile of bloatware - not that that is surprising because I have had a few Toshibas myself and all of them I have done a clean install which of course gets rid of all that clutter.

If you ever need drivers for that machine this is it http://support.toshiba.com/support/modelHome?freeText=2861099&osId=29 I see there are quite a lot that are recent additions too and you can also see the amount of bloatware there is in that link.

 

[scoostraw]

I guess I don't know of another way to change the bios so the netbook will boot from the usb stick I just made.

I tried both reboot and shutdown - when the system comes back up it goes right into Windows.

{edit} I got it. Held down F2 during power up and the setup screen appeared.

 

[scoostraw]

Ok I'm in ubunto. I see my system files but I don't see the hard drive - or the usb stick either. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place?

Here is what I'm seeing:

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate now have a look at my pic that is where drives are usually at. Now I am thinking because you are using Ubuntu on the machine itself it may be different to what I have done in the past and that is to hook a drive up to a machine running Ubuntu via an adaptor.

In your pic can you click on Computer in the Ubuntu and let us know what comes up and I am thinking it should show you any drives as it does in Windows.

Now you should be able to open Documents and Settings and then retrieve data but lets just find the drives first..

 

[scoostraw]

Yes that's exactly where I looked. There are 2 separate icons for my netbook, one for trash and one for system settings. In my photo I have clicked on one of the netbook icons (contents seem to be identical).

I see no drives.

 

[scoostraw]

Ok I did a system search for .iso and it came up with an icon "Disks". And at that point the icon I think you are referring to appears in the sidebar.

I see the Toshiba hard drive, thumb drive, and the drive I'm trying to extract from. But I see no way to view the contents. The options I have are Format partition, Create partition image, Restore partition image, and Benchmark Partition.

 

[Mellon Head]

Well, I see one thing that is wrong. Ubuntu is seeing that disk as a 2.2 TB drive, not 425 MB like it is supposed to be. Something is either wrong with your drive, adapter, or the OS.

At this point, I would connect the drive to a desktop, not a laptop, to a real SATA or IDE port (if you can find a PC that has an IDE port) and try to copy the files from that configuration. A lot of IDE to SATA/USB adapters do not read the drive properly. In my experience, they often have to reformat the drive with the adapter attached before they will read as initialized (which is counter-intuitive, and very annoying). Obviously, that will destroy your data, so you don't want to do that.

But right now, the disk is reading as a larger device than it really is. You'll have to solve that problem before you are able to retrieve the files.

 

[scoostraw]

Yeah I noticed that also. I thought maybe it was because it was such an old drive and formatted with the old OS.

Someone else mentioned the idea of installing Windows Virtual PC on my netbook and make an XP VM. The thinking being that XP would recognize the drive.

Or maybe I could stop at a computer shop. They must have old machines on hand for things like this.

 

[jumanji]

.......Or maybe I could stop at a computer shop. They must have old machines on hand for things like this.

Yep, that is good idea to try.If you are unable to find such a shop, please comeback. And then we can try to change the Disk Geometry and check whether your drive can be read.

For your drive: Cylinders 989 Heads 15 Sectors 56 We can change all this with TestDisk and see whether your disk can be read. The only grey area is the file format. Was it FAT32 or FAT16 and what is the cluster size? It could be 4KB if FAT32 and 8KB for FAT16. Changing the cluster size to a wrong value will destroy the data. So I will hesitate to change the cluster size without knowing it for sure. But for that we can change the other values and check.