Getting Vista To See The Contents Of An Old W98 HD

November 19, 2007 2:28 PM

How do I pull data from an old Windows 98 HD using Vista?

I've got a Vista Pro machine to which I want to transfer files from an old Windows 98 machine. The key facts about the old machine are that it doesn't have a CD burner, nor does it have an ethernet port.

I can, however, pull the HD and connect it to the Vista machine. After doing so, I see the machine's native HD (360GB), and the old Fujitsu drive (as D:). However, all I see on the Fujitsu drive is a partition called RECOVERY. I can't cd to D:\, either.

I tried changing security settings, and Vista promptly showed me a dialog in which the names of plenty of files scrolled by: the content I want to recover is clearly /there/, but for some reason I can't "see" it in Vista.

Any thoughts on why this might be?

posted by scrump to technology (13 comments total)

Can you boot from a linux disk and copy the files from one HDD to another, whilst having the old drive hooked up on the new PC?
posted by pixelbaby at 2:33 PM on November 19, 2007

If you've connected the old hard drive via a USB enclosure, you've found one of the really annoying misfeatures in Windows (XP does the same thing): USB drives are classed as removable, and Windows can only use the first partition found on a removable drive.

If you plug the old drive directly onto an IDE cable inside the old machine, you should be able to get at both partitions just fine.

Alternatively, use something like Partition Magic to delete the recovery partition on the Fujitsu drive (write down its size and starting point so you can put it back later, if you want). Once the Fujitsu drive has only a single partition (doesn't matter what partition number), you should be able to use it as a Windows removable drive.
posted by flabdablet at 2:35 PM on November 19, 2007

that's a little strange. windows98 does not support ntfs, which is when the security settings button would have any effect at all. what do you see if you go into disk administrator?
posted by rhizome at 2:35 PM on November 19, 2007

By the way, there should be no security issue with the Windows 98 hard disk. Windows 98 uses one of the FAT file systems (FAT16 or FAT32), neither of which support any kind of access control (unless you count the "read-only" attribute as access control).
posted by flabdablet at 2:37 PM on November 19, 2007

It's likely that the reason you can't see files on the recovery partition is that the Hidden bit is turned on in its partition table entry. Windows will report the existence of such a partition, but will not mount any filesystem it may contain.
posted by flabdablet at 2:38 PM on November 19, 2007

You should be able to get at all the data with a program like Stellan Phoenix. It is a data recovery app that should be able to see everything on the physical disk, so it isn't constrained by the FAT.
posted by trinity8-director at 2:44 PM on November 19, 2007

flabdablet is absolutely correct, and I would wager that's the problem. So, seconding, I guess.
posted by General Malaise at 2:56 PM on November 19, 2007

Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management...

...may shed some light on things. Can you see all the partitions there?
posted by jeffamaphone at 3:24 PM on November 19, 2007

jeffamaphone, that was exactly my first port of call when I first ran into this issue trying to set up a clever multi-partitioned USB flash drive. Disk Management could see all the partitions just fine, but Windows would only ever mount the filesystem on the first one. Attempts to hand-assign drive letters or directory paths to the remaining partitions simply failed.

I swore.

A lot.
posted by flabdablet at 5:11 PM on November 19, 2007

If the Win98 pc is still usable, you can use Vista's Window Easy Transfer to move files from your old machine to Vista via a transfer cable or a home network.
posted by Kioki-Silver at 8:44 PM on November 19, 2007

Yeah, I dunno. That sucks. I always blow away the recovery partition... I'm a big believer in one partition, one drive.
posted by jeffamaphone at 10:31 AM on November 20, 2007

If you grab your favorite linux live-cd (make sure it has some fdisk variant such as cfdisk or qfdisk), you should be able to go into the disk's partition table and have a looksy at it. According to people upthread, the hidden bit might be set on the partition, so I guess that might be something to look at.

Of course, I'm assuming you already know how to do this, which I guess if you did, you wouldn't be asking. If you look around on the 'ole intarwebs (perhaps for "how to use qfdisk" or "edit partition table live cd"), you should find some guides. Just be very careful, and take notes on the parameters before you change anything.
posted by !Jim at 5:24 PM on November 20, 2007

Just to be clear about this: I'm thinking that there are at least two (probably exactly two) partitions defined on this disk. The first one will be the hidden "recovery" partition, which will hold a bunch of utilities and files designed by the manufacturer to restore the second partition, which will actually be the main one, to as-shipped-from-factory condition*.

I'm thinking that Windows is doing its usual stupid thing of only dealing with the first partition it finds on what it thinks is a removable drive, which in this case happens to be the hidden recovery partition, and then refusing to mount even that because it's hidden.

And I'm thinking that if you want Windows to mount the second partition, which is where all your actual files are at, you will need to do one of two things: entirely remove the partition table entry for the first partition, or physically attach the drive via an IDE cable instead of USB, so that multiple partitions are OK.

Simply turning off the hidden bit in the recovery partition's partition table entry would make the files on the recovery partition available to Windows, which is probably not a terribly useful thing to do.

jeffamaphone: one partition, one drive is indeed the usual Windows Way. I'm quite fond of two partitions, one drive on Windows: one partition for Windows and Program Files, and another for Documents and Settings. That way, once you've got Windows and your software set up the way way you like it, you can use an offline disk imaging tool to make a compressed image of the first partition in a file on the second; so that when (not if) Windows goes belly-up and you need to do a full rebuild, this involves only a quick partition re-image instead of a lengthy Windows + software install, and none of your own files get trashed in the process.

On Linux, I like three partitions per disk: 80MB boot, 1GB swap, and the rest for LVM2.

* Why do manufacturers call this process "recovery" when what they actually means is "blow everything away beyond reasonable hope of recovery"?
posted by flabdablet at 5:55 PM on November 22, 2007