I'm hoping to get a new computer soon and I have been using an external hard drive formatted for windows 98 and flash drives formatted for windows xp and I want to know if I plug any of these in to my new computer what will happen to the data. Can i just go in and move the data over reformat the drives and move it back once the drives are formatted for my machine? Or what can I do?
2007-02-26 05:07:39 · 10 answers · asked by talkingtoveruca 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
If you go with a new Windows computer with Windows Vista, some old USB devices might not work. Newer devices can work just fine. Your old computer's hard drive will probably work in the new computer too, so you can mount that. But you may have to FIDDLE with the BIOS if the computer comes with a new SATA drive.
Good luck and Happy Computing!
2007-02-26 05:11:41 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Backing up and transferring data this way will work just fine.
Newer operating systems are built specifically to be as backwards-compatible as they can be. XP is able to recognize NTFS, FAT32 and FAT16 file systems regardless of what system the OS drive is installed on. The Windows 98 drive will be formatted in FAT32.
Just keep in mind that you can only transfer data this way, not programs. So most installed programs would have to be reinstalled.
2007-02-26 13:28:48 · answer #2 · answered by Bjorn 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can't have an OS on an external drive because they connect through a USB port and you need to first load drivers for a USB port before you can use it, external hard drives are only for backing up data, if you want to install two operating systems partition your hard disk install win 98 on the C drive (do it first before installing XP) then on the other partition install XP, XP will detect win 98 and make your system dual boot
2007-02-26 13:14:44 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yep, the data remains the same between different versions of windows.
You might have trouble getting an XP or Vista machine to see an old FAT32 formatted drive though, since they use NTFS.
2007-02-26 13:10:00 · answer #4 · answered by joemammysbigguns 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hi
Well it depends if the paritions on the drives are FAT32 and the new xp is the same then yes , now IF the xp is NTFS and the drives are FAT32 then no , you will need a partition converter or swap partitiion in order to access the drive
2007-02-26 13:13:13 · answer #5 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
no problem to your data it remains as it is. You can change to any windows versions there is not at all any problem so dont worry & get ahead for new pc only the problem comes when you may use Linux & NTFS. But no problem if you're using FATdrives they can work for LINUX as well as Windows no matter the versions & dont get afraid of loosing of data.
2007-02-26 13:46:42 · answer #6 · answered by Rohit 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
as for mac :
macs read and write fat32(drives smaller than 4gb)
macs read only ntfs (windows larger than 4gb)
macs read and write unix fs
all drives formatted with windows will be recognized with other windows os(me, xp, vista,nt, 95,98)
linux reads and writes all(not pretty sure of that)
2007-02-26 13:29:24 · answer #7 · answered by 0000001 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You should able to swap files easy from one computer to the next.
Use a external harddrive or a router for your high speed internet.
2007-02-26 13:10:40 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
That is a definate maybe! If you have FAT32 file system it will have the highest level of compatabliity, but will be less secure than NTFS.
2007-02-26 13:24:44 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
yes
2007-02-26 13:11:46 · answer #10 · answered by S A 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋