Retrieving data from old HD?

I am trying to get some data off of an old HD for a friend. The machine it came out of wouldn't boot, but I know it is a 386 (if that matters). I removed the HD and connected it to my XP machine. XP recognized it and installed it and it displays as "HOST FOR C(E)". When I open or explore it, no files appear. Properties shows that there are about 90 megs (it's a 100meg drive) of data on it in 9 files and 3 folders, but I can't see any of them (I have "show system and hidden files" enabled). I tried writing to it, and that worked. The file I placed on it showed up, but no others do.

I tried right-clicking the drive, selecting "copy", then pasting the works into a folder on my C: drive. When I did this, 1 file shows up - "Command.com". At 54K it does not account for all the data on the HD. The copy process took a good minute or so, so it is certainly reading and transferring SOMEthing.

Any other ideas or tricks that I could try? Your advice is appreciated.

 

My mistake. Show System files wasn't checked, only hidden. Some system files have shown up, the largest being one with a .000 extension. Does that help?

 

Ok, more info: It seems that this dblspace.000 file is the key, but I can't find info about how to access this type of file. That is my new mission/request

 

Double Space (dblspace.sys) was a program used by DOS 6.0 to increase disk storage capacity by creating a compressed volume on the drive that you could write to and read from on-the-fly. dblspace.000 is the default compressed volume file name. You are probably only going to be able to access data in such a volume under DOS 6.0.

 

What would you suggest as a good way to go about this? Can I install and run DOS 6 on my XP machine, from the command prompt? Should I install it on the old machine that the drive came from, since I have already backed up the files? Should I just tell my friend to forget about their files?

 

I would not try installing DOS on an XP machine. The most elegant way would be if you could boot DOS 6.0 from a floppy and have it load Double Space into memory. The problem will be that DOS 6.0, even if it can read from the dblspace.000 volume on the old drive, it will not be able to write to the most likely either FAT32 or NTFS volumes on the machine's other drives. Maybe a Win98 boot disk would do the trick, as I believe it can read Double Space volumes and write to FAT32, but if your XP machine is NTFS, then

 

I see. Well, I just happen to have a drive lying around with WinXP installed on FAT32. I will give it a try. Thanks for the help!

 

I am revisiting this little problem after a bit of a hiatus. I have the drive installed as a slave in a System running Windows 98. I an access the drive but I cannot figure out how to uncompress or mount the doublesapce file. Anyone have any ideas? I have tried "scandisk d: /mount" from the dos prompt, but I get hte message that the drive is not mounted...

 

DOS 6 relied on a couple of drivers to deal with a DoubleSpace compressed volume. Those drivers ran resident in memory, and loaded ahead of everything else (except COMMAND.COM) when the machine started. You may need to set up a machine that loads DBLSPACE.BIN and DBLSPACE.SYS when it starts so you can read DBLSPACE.000.

I have a Win98SE manual that seems to indicate that Win98's DriveSpace can deal with a DoubleSpace compressed volume. It seems that it will de-compress files in the compressed volume to the same drive -- but yours is full enough that you won't be able to de-compress all files in the volume. You'll need to decompress what you can, then move the de-compressed files off that drive to make space to de-compress more files.

I've never worked with DoubleSpace or DriveSpace, so I can't claim hands-on experience with what you're trying to do. I just happen to have some manuals around for DOS 6 and Win98SE. It also means that I can't tell you how to set up the DoubleSpace drivers. They'll be 16-bit drivers, so I'm not convinced that they will work under Win98.

If DriveSpace (in Win98) doesn't work for you, you might have to set up DOS 6 with DoubleSpace on a machine to deal with the compressed volume. TheDoug's approach also might work. Perhaps there's room on the old drive to install DOS 6 with DoubleSpace -- if it's not already there. (Have you tried booting from it?) Or perhaps you can pick up another small drive (used) for a couple of bucks to install DOS 6 with DoubleSpace onto, and mount the drive with the compressed volume as a secondary drive.

Once you have the contents of the compressed volume de-compressed onto a FAT16 volume, a FAT32 or NTFS machine should be able to read the files.

 

HELP.... I had some files stored on an external hard drive. However when I plugged it in, I was asked to reformat, thinking the data was backed up. It wasn't and now I need the data from the external hard drive (which works fine now with reformatting). The external hard drive is Pocketec, and I am using Windows Vista. What should I do?

 

Hi All,

Just some thoughts:

Win98SE comes with Drivespace 3. It will uncompress the drive and also wil uncompress DoubleSpace drives. It is found in the 'C:\Windows\Command' folder. The Drive is not Fat 32 but is Fat 16 as Drivespace 3 will not handle Fat32. Check the help in 98. It will tell you that the full instruction are in Drivespace 3. I would research the subject extensively first. If you are knowledgeable and careful you should be able to recover the data using the 98 comp.

Good luck,

Jim

 

Hi, jmfoot --

Welcome to Major Geeks ...

You've tacked your query onto a very old thread, much of which seems not to be terribly relevant to your particular situation. You might do better to start a new thread for your question -- it's more likely to be seen by more folks who might be able to suggest an answer for you.

Usually, recovering data from a drive that has been reformatted is not possible without tools and expertise not usually found in your friendly corner computer store. But it's not impossible, especially if you're willing to spend money. It will help considerably if the data on the drive has not been overwritten by other files.