Transfering data from a dead PC's Zip drive?

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

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Friend of mine has given me a dead PC, I reckon its hard drive failure as I repaired it previously and the hard drive sounded as if it was on the way out then.

It's doing the same thing now, boot up results in an "Operating system not found" message.

Anyway, it's got an old zip drive fitted to it and he has invoices relating to his part time business on the zip drive disk that he desperately needs to access.

I haven't had time to take it apart as of yet but I am assuming that the zip drive will have similar connections on it to a floppy drive on the back of it?.

Also, not having any dealings with zip drives before I'm wondering if Vista will recognise and support such old technology?.

Thanks in advance for any assistance. :cool:
 
Internal Zip drives usualy have an IDE connection (like a hard drive or a CD rom), if you're really unlucky it might be SCSI. But then the old PC will probably have a SCSI card you can rob.

Windows 2000 recognises Zip drives without trouble, so I'd be very supprised if XP32 had trouble. Vista, I have no idea.
 
I have an old Zip100 Parrallel drive in my spare room. The drivers are there for XP somewhere on the wibbly web. Email my trust if the situation becomes mega desperate.
 
After Win2000pro, Windows supported the ZIP drive (and the JAZ) natively (they either report as a 'Removable Drive' or ZIP100 or ZIP250 etc..)... its just the extra functions that need the Iomega software installing..

I've installed: ZIP (paralell, USB and ATAPI) on Win2000, XP32/64, Vista and even Linux (Ubuntu 32bit) with no problems!...
 
Cheers for the replies folks, appreciated.

Just had a look at it and its an Iomega 100.

Going to open the case up and take a closer look this morning.

I'm going to hook it up to an IDE to USB adaptor. Hopefully it should be a doddle to transfer all the stuff over from it, and this time I'm going to definately make the guy aware of the fact that you should always back up important stuff like this!!! :p
 
Draeger said:
Cheers for the replies folks, appreciated.

Just had a look at it and its an Iomega 100.

Going to open the case up and take a closer look this morning.

I'm going to hook it up to an IDE to USB adaptor. Hopefully it should be a doddle to transfer all the stuff over from it, and this time I'm going to definately make the guy aware of the fact that you should always back up important stuff like this!!! :p
Click to expand...

At least it wasnt on his hard drive. Got to give him a little credit there.
 
Unfortunately not.

He also needs data recovered from his HD as well. :p

Thankfully he got a new Dell Vostro desktop last week and that will be his new business PC, so this old pile of junk with all his data on it can go in the bin after I am done with it!!! :cool:
 
He doesnt need this recovering though does he? Its safe on there, get a new PC plug the ZIP in and hes got is data again? You need to work on his hard drive if he needs stuff from that too...
 
Hooked up the zip drive via an IDE to USB enclosure and managed to recover all invoices, customer details from it in this way.

You guys were right, the zip drive had an IDE connection on the rear and Vista recognised it instantly then it showed up as a "Removable drive".

Thanks folks!!! :cool:
 
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