I am about to attempt to mine some very critical documents off an old Windows 95 (or maybe Windows 98) hard drive by swapping hard drives temporarily with an almost new Dell PC with XP (and importantly, USB ports). I don't want to screw either the Dell PC/hard drive or the critical W95/8 hard drive up so I'm wondering if there is anything I need to know before I attempt it. Is it pretty straightforward; can I just swap 'em out and plug them right in? What should I know or be careful about before, during and after? Thanks.

". . .swapping hard drives. . .". You mean you're going to remove the XP drive and put the 9X drive in its place? If so, where are you going to copy the documents?

Anyway, if you plan on booting the 9X drive on the Dell, the OS will notice all the new hardware and attempt to install drivers. I suppose you could cancel all that and still have access to the documents. It's also possible the Dell won't see the drive the same as the other PC did and it won't want to boot up.

It might be better to add the drive as a slave to the Dell and leave the XP drive in. Then you could boot normally into XP and then copy the documents. That usually works out.

Win95 has issues with fast CPU's and lots of memory, why not buy an USB drive enclosure and access the drive that way ??

I had planned on copying the WIN9X hard drive files through the Dell's USB ports onto a thumb drive. I suppose I am liking your suggestion now to add it as a slave though, although I don't know how to perform that hardware or software arrangement.

As for the USB drive enclosure, the WIN9X hard drive is currently independent and not physically installed on any computer, so I don't think that would help..?

Having the thumb drive available in 9X (if you boot from the 9X drive) will require you install its 9X drivers. Even if you can find those drivers they probably will need at least 98SE in order to work.

I think the only way to do it is to leave the XP drive in. You can jumper the 9X drive as slave and attach it on the same cable as the XP drive (well, unless the XP drive is SATA).

Or you could do the same thing on the secondary port--probably the one your cdrom is connected to. You could jumper it as slave and attach it there or even temporarily disconnect the cdrom (since you wouldn't need it to transfer the files) and connect the 9X drive in its place.

Absolutely; slave it.
Disconnect the CD/DVD drive and connect it there.

Power up, hit F2 to get to setup and have it recognize the attached drive.
Copy away.

Bryan

Wow guys, I'm going to do that. Easy enough. Thanks a lot!