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Windows 95 second Hard Drive on Win 98

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by bobrace 1 view

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I recently put windows 98 on a computer and took the drive out of my windows 95 PC and placed in the above 98 PC as a second drive (slave) on the primary slave IDE. Cables are right and cmos sees the second drive, but in win 98, it doesn't show up under my computer, although I do see it under device manager, but it won't let me assign a drive letter to it. It was partitioned in 95 as 3 drives and now I can't even see it in win 98. What do I need to do to retrieve some data from it. I haven't tried dropping to DOS, I wonder if that will work.

7 replies

by thechas

I suspect that a drive overlay program was installed on the W95 drive.

If the drive is larger than 2GB, it is likely that the motherboard on the old PC could not recognize drives larger than 2GB.

The 'best' (easiest) option for you will be to place the drive back into the W95 PC, and use a file transfer cable to link the 2 PCs, and copy over the files you need.
You will need to install direct cable connection on both PCs under networking in control panel.

Otherwise, you need to install the same drive overlay software on your W98 PC. (both hard drives may need to be from the same drive mfg in order for the software to load)

Drive overlay programs load from the Boot Sector of the drive. They are used to fool the BIOS so that you can use the full capacity of a hard drive that is larger than the BIOS can recognize.

There are ways to remove the drive overlay programs. However, I do not recommend doing so unless you have all critical files backed up, as removing the drive overlay software often results in loosing some or all files.

Chas

by s.milhouse

There could be a statement in the autoexec.bat or config.sys blocking you from being able to set the new drive letter. Look in the config.sys. If there is a LASTDRV = statement change it to Lastdrv=Z or REM (remark) it out completely. Windows 95 and 98 still checks for statements in your autoexec.bat and config.sys before booting. Also try FDISK to see if you can see the drive. Only use the option to view the drive. The number 5 option will allow you to choose the physical drive you want to access. Then choose the option 4 to view it. You should be able to see if it's been partitioned and whether it's File allocation table is FAT 16 or 32. This is a good place to start looking for answers. Good luck

by jose_12650

If the slaved hard drive which came from 95 Windows computer contains the 95 OS, it is unlikely that you would be able to switch its driver letter. You said that the 95 harddrive has 3 drives (partitions), if your data is in the partitions other than where the OS is at (which is drive C), you can go to DOS and deactivate the partition from the old drive which houses the 95 Operating System. After it has been deactivated, your system must be able to detect and assign automatic drive letters to it.

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