Two Questions, One Serious | Can You Help With My Tech Conundrum?
Hypothetical Question: If two trains leave the station at the same time, one travelling at 50 mph, and the other at 75 mph…what happens when a cat crosses the tracks 3 miles from the station in 10 minutes?
Answer: Nothing.
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Real Question: If I want to access data on an old laptop that (1) no longer has internet access (2) has no floppy drive (3) is on Windows 98 which doesn’t support a SanDisk Mini Cruzer (4) won’t read my printer driver CD….
How can I get the data off without retyping everything by hand or buying an attachable floppy or other equipment?
Notes:
- The data really is worth the effort. It’s covers my work from 2000 to end of 2003. Enough said.
- SanDisk has a small driver I can download from the Internet to install on the computer, that makes it possible to use SanDisk with Win 98. But I don’t have a way to get the driver onto the laptop…
- For some reason I can’t figure out, I can’t save data to any CDs I try.
Options, all of which feel like a Royal Pain, isn’t there an easier way?
- Reinstate connectivity to the internet. It’s doesn’t have wireless so I need to find a cable and probably jig around with IP addresses.
- Network my two laptops somehow and theoretically just drag and drop the data to my new laptop.
Sigh. I seem to know enough to know it should be easy, and that’s it.
Any suggestions or helpful folk willing to help detangle this knot? Reward: Really cool data released from captivity equals some cool new blog posts that include graphs and case studies…
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Posted to: Requests for Help
September 9th, 2006 at 5:17 am
Andrea,
I have a couple of ideas. Do you have a USB port on the laptop?
If you would like, just email me and I can brainstorm with you.
Laurie W-S
September 12th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Hi Andrea,
I haven’t used this product since circa 1991 at a horrible internship experience, but a thing called laplink (http://www.laplink.com/) used to allow us to connect 1 PC to another & download all the information on it (or select info). That was 1991 and the PCs were dinosaurs, so maybe they have something that could work for you? I don’t have any stake in the Co. just a bad internship memory that might help you out.
If you need other ideas, feel free to email me & I’ll see if I can come up with something on my own or by talking to my PC geek colleagues.
September 15th, 2006 at 7:06 am
Perhaps I am missing something, but try this:
Download the SanDisk driver on another computer and write it to a CD.
Take the CD to the old laptop and install the SanDisk Driver from the CD.
Connect the SanDisk to the old laptop.
Then you should be able to copy the data to the SanDisk.
This should work, unless that your old laptop doesn’t have a working CD drive.
September 15th, 2006 at 7:11 am
Re my other post:
I just realized you said you cannot save data to a CD. This is a separate problem. Either your CD writer isn’t working, or the CDs you are trying to write to are bad.
Get someone else to download the driver and write it to a CD for you.
Then take that CD to your old laptop.
Simple is best.
Networking the old laptop with your current computer is more complex.
Good luck!
October 9th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Andrea J. Lee: Two Questions, One Serious | Can You Help With My Tech Con.
Andrea’s request for help:
http://www.msoci.com/andrea/archives/requests_for_help/
Hi!
Some additional information would help.
1) How much data do you want to copy? In Megabytes.
2) What format is the data in? Text, a standard format like Word, comma delimited files, WordPerfect, or proprietary formats that only work with unique older programs?
3) Do you need the operating system and the program running to have the data be useful to you? E.g. If it’s all formatted in older proprietary software, after you get the data you will need to convert it to a useful format. Or export it from the program.
4) Besides the keyboard, what is your I/O - Your input and output means? A parallel port, a serial port? a USB port, a floppy Drive, CD ROM? or CD-RW?
It sounds like the machine is not working (won’t read printer CD). Won’t burn them.
You could use a LapLink type program and a parallel cable (booting to DOS) and send it to another machine.
Or borrow a Parallel port Zip drive (if you can load the driver). Copy the data off the notebook, onto the Zip Cartridge. Then attach the zip drive to your second machine put in the data cartridge and copy the data to a folder on there.
DONE!
Worst case scenario. Take it to a computer shop, not a “Big Name” one, someone who works on Notebooks and understands different operating systems.
If there’s no way to get the notebook hardware, operating system and software working:
Buy a 2.5″ external hard drive case (with it’s own power supply) $12 -19.00 that has a USB cable. Inside is a daughter board (some brains) and a mini connector for a Notebook hard drive.
Have someone, perhaps you, gently remove the hard drive from the notebook and install it into the external case.
Plug the mini hard drive connector into the board. Gently snap or screw together the case taking care not to pinch any wires. When you plug it in, it should work. Check the box at the STORE to make sure it will work on a Win98 machine.
http://www.tigerdirect.com http://www.pcconnection.com http://www.pcmall.com http://www.bestbuy.com, http://www.circuitcity.com , http://www.officemax.com http://www.directron.com
Do a search on Shopzilla or Shop.com for the best price. Online purchase is much cheaper than at a store.
To just move the data, boot the machine you’re going to transfer it ONTO from a floppy or CD-ROM. DO NOT start windows. Stay at the command prompt C:\>
The Desktop machine will have one operating system (2000, NT, XP)? and your notebook drive will have it’s busted Win98 Operating System.
Some of the files have the same names and paths. It will likely confuse your main machine mess it up — if you just plug in and start up both.
I suggest using a DOS based program to move the data over from the USB drive to a folder on your desktop machine.
Win98 may have Fat 16, and Fat 32 whereas your newer machine will have NTFS.
Robocopy is a file copying program I’m pretty sure is free. Google “freeware.” or “Windows 98 freeware copying utilities.”
Run Robocopy from the command line. There are switches, you select what directories to copy to where and what date to use. Original file date or the day you do the copying.
Robocopy is smart enough to ignore system files. Drag and drop is NOT. It will choke & stop. You will have to keep checking down two lists of files to see where it stopped. Very annoying.
With Robocopy you start it and forget it. It will just copy your notebook external data from that drive — to your other computer. Create a file to send it to FIRST - like Win98NoteData.
Later, the data, without the Notebook’s operating system should allow you to unplug the USB drive, and boot up your other machine in whatever operating system you have. You should be able to drag and drop the files and folders then.
If you need Win98 applications to use some of the data, you’ll have to set up a multi-boot machine and have a hidden version of 98 on it. Until you can convert and save your data files in a format that can be used by a current program, in a current operating system.
I’d be happy to speak with you over the phone. It’s hard to accomplish this kind of project without all the information and I can’t just look quickly myself.
I’ve dealt with this problem multiple times myself. I started with the CPM operating system, before MS-DOS.
It’s hard for new users to understand the complex process of migrating data and converting files onto new Operating Systems, hardware, applications.
There are ways to trick the printer port. You can make a file out of whatever you send to the printer — even if there’s no printer there!
An old free DOS program called Print2file.exe, or .com does it. It grabs what is sent to the printer port and creates a file.
You only get ASCII text. Alphabet letters and numbers, like a typewriter, no fonts. The sentence breaks and page breaks may be lost. But it’s a lot easier to pour that into Word and easily pretty it up than type it all from scratch or an OCR scan.
You can return the drive gently back into the notebook, the same way you removed it. Reformat it and do a fresh install of Win98. You might also get a USB floppy drive for $16-30 at any of the places I named above to fix your Win98 installation and CD / Printer drivers.
If you do have a USB port, Buy an external media card reader about $9.00 and a SD media 1 gig / $10.00 and copy the data that way. Then put the card reader on your other machine and copy the data to it’s hard drive.
Let me know if I can help. Best of Luck.
Arlene