recovering data from an old doublespace drive??

aardvark · 2 May 2006 at 10:02

ok, a hard one this:
my friend has an old hard drive that he wants to get the data from - the problem is that it was doublespaced.
if he plugs it in, winxp recognises the drive but none of the data on it - he can see the dblspace.ini file but not the main file (dblspace.000 ?), so he can't see the data.
he tried booting to the drive itself and using dos to un-doublespace but it crashes when he tries to do run any programs - maybe because the old drive can't handle the new hardware its on?

so we are a bit stuck - is there a doublespace reader around?

cheers

basmic · 2 May 2006 at 10:20

Got an old copy of Windows 98 laying about? That would fit the bill nicely.

aardvark · 2 May 2006 at 11:08

does win98 read doublespaced drives from within windows then??

i thought it didn't.

ns400r · 2 May 2006 at 13:15

It's the version of DOS that sets up and configures the doublespace or drivespace utility. DOS 6.0 - 6.2 used Doublespace then DOS 6.21 used Drivespace, or so I remember.

Why not download a copy of Vitrual PC from Microsoft, install a copy of DOS 6.2 on it and then use that to uncompress the drive? Then copy the info to your XP drive.

basmic · 2 May 2006 at 14:08

aardvark said:
does win98 read doublespaced drives from within windows then??

i thought it didn't.

I'm 95% sure it does.