I have an old Win95 machine (circa 1997) and just lost the slave hard
drive (D
( corrupted FAT thanks to scandisk? ). So two questions:
2) The system is an AI5TH motherboard ( 82430HX cipset with 82371SB
PCI_IDE controller? ). What diskdrive formats are compatible should I
need to purchase a new one ( ATA, Ultra DMA_33, 66, 100? ). I don't
need a lot of room - just enough to get the machine up and running
the same old apps its been used for ( the old drive was a huge 4gb ! )
2) any links to utilities I might use to rescue the data on the drive
would be appreciated ( I googled but got lost in the various MBR's and
Fats etc. :-( )
Thanks for any help
The motherboard supports UDMA/ATA33. Newer ATA66/100/133 hard drives
are backwards compatible, this is not a problem but the drive
performance WILL be slower due to the ATA33 interface. Modern drives
need at least ATA66 to provide "most" of the performance they're
capable of. Still, new drives in old systems do give them a nice
responsiveness even on ATA33. If you're running Win95 still then you
probably already know to use the Intel UATA Busmatster IDE driver (or
whatever it's called). Newer versions of Windows natively support
that motherboard chipset without need to install additional drivers
for it.
The other issue is drive capacity support. Odds are very high that
the board won't support drives over 32GB, perhaps not over 8GB. You
can use the software that comes with the drive to install a Drive
Overlay (it's fairly automated, the software checks and does it if
needed) but the far better solution is to use a PCI IDE controller
card or check for a motherboard BIOS update, apply one if there's
indication that it would support larger drives. The PCI IDE
controller card may be the best solution if you have an empty PCI slot
on your motherboard. One of the more popular PCI IDE controller cards
is a "Promise Ultra100" and you can usually find those on Ebay for
$10-$20 delivered (Just watch out for and consider the sometimes-high
shipping fees).
Suggesting data receovery software is complex issue, since the wrong
suggestion might not recovery the data but might also prevent later
success in recovering the data. In general it's highly advised to use
software that does not alter the original drive/data, instead
recovering what it can by copying it to a 2nd hard drive or partition.
With that in mind you might try Ontrack's EasyRecovery, though I don't
know if it's the best alternative or not... if the data is REALLY
valuable take the drive to a data recovery expert first.
EasyRecovery:
http://www.ontrack.com/
Dave
