USB For Backing Up HDD

[atc_traffic856]

I do remember that there is something like a Zip drive that will take a good amount of MB if you want to back up your HDD using a USB port??
Does anyone know where I can seek some knowledge on this. More or less I just want to beable to hook up to one of the USB ports on a older PC that is running 95win and back up all the files from the hDD through this method??

[Paul Komski]

Something like a memory card (http://www.abusinessresource.com/Camera_and_Photo/Memory_Cards_and_Readers/p-4.htm) maybe but there may be problems with Win95 support for USB so ensure that you can get Win95 Drivers for the pen-drive or card-reader if you go that route.

They are very handy and fast as long as the OS supports them and you dont need more than about 512MB.

[Budfred]

There are a number of options, although setting them up with USB might be a little tricky. There are 250Mb Zip drives, 1gig and I think 2gig Jaz drives and, of course, CDRW drives. In addition to memory cards, there are also thumb drives. How much capacity are you looking for?

[atc_traffic856]

Yes well since this person runs win95 it is fat16 and a 2.0 G HDD
topically the amount she wants to save from the drive would be approx. alittle over 1g I would guess at tops 1.5G> What Paul said is what I remember reading about, although I think that would be alittle more work setting up, rather then to use something more compatible with the OS sys/ win95??

[Budfred]

I think there may be some older USB CDR drives that will run with Win95, but I am not sure about that. It has been a long time since I used Win95 much I am afraid... I believe I used to use my Sygate 1 gig external drive with Win95 if I remember correctly... I think they are only available used, but they can be found pretty cheap if you can find the media...

[Paul Komski]

USB support for Win95 (http://www.usbman.com/Win95%20USB%20Guide.htm) is going to be sketchy/hit-and-miss/absent and it is also doubtful if there will be hardware drivers specifically designed for use under it. You may be lucky and get Win98 drivers that might function - but I wouldn't rely on it.

If you can't get a supported CDRW - then slaving a HDD (in a swap bay for easy access), adding a tape/etc drive or networking via a NIC or using DCC would be other options. Not forgetting floppies - of course.

[Budfred]

I just remembered that my old Sparq (not Sygate), drive was connected to the parallel port, not the USB. However, I know there used to be external CDR drives that connected via parallel port, so that could also be an option...

[Paul Komski]

You would need about 700 floppies for your 1GB ;) :D of course.

[atc_traffic856]

Thank you for the sites>>
Unfortunately the PC win95 is before the date of USB support, as to what the chart reiterated, from Pauls site.
I search for the external drives to a varied amount of sites and the percentage are USB 2.0. You mention slave a drive, I have this old 2.0
G HDD in one of my old Pentium PC's that I used years ago it is win95/
So I think I will take out the HDD and rig the cable lengths for easier
hook up to her PC. Then make sure it is recognized through the booting up/ now I wonder when I accomplish this that I could use Ghost to backup all the necessary files too this drive her sys is a Pentium MMX
but would the sys wbe capable of using the Ghost imaging for a backup ??

[Paul Komski]

A 2Gig HDD, although the maximum under Win95A using FAT16, should be fine (unless that is that the BIOS is so old that it only supports 528MB).

Ghost or Drive Image should have no problems other than it may take a while to make/restore the images using a slow processor and not much RAM.

If running such programs from boot diskettes it can help speed things up to first run smartdrv if you can set this up. This is done very nicely using EBCD with Drive Image Installed onto it.

[atc_traffic856]

Ok thanks for all your support and knowledge, I will use the Ghost>>