external hardrive question

[jojo]

If I pull the hard drive from my Compaq Presario (windows 98)
and put it in an external hard drive case, will my Dell
laptop (windows xp pro sp2) be able to read the info and run the programs on
it?
without reformatting the drive?

Thanks,
jojo

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Jojo.

Yes - and no.

Yes, WinXP should be able to read the files just fine. Reformatting the
drive should not be necessary. WinXP seamlessly mixes NTFS and older file
systems, just like Win98 seamlessly mixes FAT32 with floppy diskettes
(FAT12), Win95 (FAT16) and CD drive (CDFS or UDF) formats.

WinXP may be able to run SOME programs from your old HD, but most will
probably need to be reinstalled in WinXP. Simply having the executable
files on your drive is not enough. Each program needs to be allowed to make
entries into your WinXP Registry - and that means running that program's
Install or Setup program while you are running WinXP. In a few cases, there
are different versions of the program files for the Win9x/ME platform and
the Win2K/XP platform.

RC

 

[Alvin Brown]

Hello Jojo

To answer your question yes and no, I would say that if I were
you I woul djust burn what important data you have on their to a
cdrom and then try, but most important before doing anything
make a backup copy of your important data(best advice I can give
you)

Alvin

 

[Guest]

OK just get FACTS straight.

Windows XP is capable of reading FAT, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file structures.

So if one attaches the HDD of a Windows 98 system disk via external case or
otherwise, without the exeptional problems caused by interface / drivers etc,
it can be ACCESSED by another system running XP.

All files can be read, using the term file to represent any single item of
data stored: the problem comes with interpreting the data. If there isn't an
application able to interpret the file, then it won't OPEN as such.

So if you have a MS Word 98 document [filename.doc] on that external disk
and you have MS Word 2003 on the XP system, the file will be OPENED in MS
Word 2003, as it has the appropriate code to translate the file.

If there is an executable file [filename.exe or filename.dll] it may or not
be OPENED or RUN under XP. COnsider that in themajority of cases it will not
be run under XP. For an .exe file to be OPENED XP must have the appropriate
entries in registry. Given that an application, when installed, creates
these entries [for all its executable modules, and there may be hundreds of
..exe and .dll for any given application] then unless you have it on the XP
machine, it won't run. However why bother opening an .exe file from the 98
disk when the application is installed in XP.

Also some earlier versions of an applcation may not be compatible with XP
and need to have the XP version installed.

So if you need an application which is not on your XP system, it needs to be
installed before opening any unique files associated with that application.
For eample, if you have Quickbooks on the 98 System and not on the XP system,
you won't be able to OPEN any Quickbooks files, nor will it work by
attempting to open a Quickbooks .exe file.

Hope this clarifies the file structure and file type situation.