Please help me! I need to find a way to transfer large data files, individual files up to 13 meg) from an old 3.1 windows box to a windows 98 or up box (preferably xp). The old computer also has a 120 meg tape drive I could possibly install (what about drivers?) or I could put the hard drive into the newer box, and try to copy from one drive to the other (master - slave, which should be the master?).

Would any windows 98 or above box be able to recognise the 70 meg drive if I put it in an existing box? I'm not sure if the old drive is scsi or ide or what, it old.

a friend (old client) is despartely trying to transfer data, with one of the INDIVIDUAL data files being approx 13 meg onto a newer box (total data size about 25 meg - 15 files) plus a bunch of smaller ones.

They've been using it for 13 years had a fire, panicked, and realized that they probably should upgrade, some people just never get a clue, go figure.

Thanks in advance

big dog

Best way by far would be to use network cards, but that might not be worth the effort.

DOS based Win98 shouldn't have any problem recognizing an old IDE drive if configured as a slave or secondary master, and transferring files would be easy. I can't say for sure with XP, but I'd imagine there wouldn't be a problem. Remember, the primary master is what boots the computer, so it'd be best to make the old drive either the slave or secondary master.

If it's only 25Mb of data, maybe a parallel port transfer would do the trick - you'd need a 'parallel port file transfer cable' - couple of bucks - and some software such as the free File Maven for DOS or the trial version of Link Maven for Win32.

SCSI drive's are another story - different cable, different port - would probably need its own card etc - it's likely an IDE drive though.

Well, Windows 3.1 won't detect NTFS drives...maybe with some software, but I don't know...
Just keep that in mind...

El-Trucha

I regularly install FAT16 & FAT32 IDE Drives as slaves into XP machines to transfer data across, and in some cases leave them in for the user to access the data themselves. Most modern PC's auto-detect the drive, and as long as the is set correctly there should be no problems. When you have finished just remove the drive and the BIOS will re-set itself again.

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