How to get files off an old laptop running Windows NT?

Question

Hey ill tell you guys my situation and you can hopefully help me decide the best way to get old pictures off this laptop.

I can boot the laptop. It is running Windows NT 4.0. It has 2 USB drives, a port for a phone line (dial up im guessing?) and everything on the laptop seems to work.

I have tried using a few new and old USB drives as well as a new usb hard drive to get the files but i cannot access the drives from the laptop.

The two ideas i have thought of are either getting the files through a network transfer or external drive. What would you guys recommend trying?

Thanks

Answer 1

The network transfer is probably going to be your simplest solution if you are familiar with setting up file sharing on Windows computers. If you have trouble accessing the share from the NT machine for some reason, you could even go as far as to set up an FTP server on a newer PC (using [http://filezilla-project.org/](Filezilla server) for example and use ftp from the command line to upload some of your files off the NT machine.

I looked and most of the old mass storage drivers for NT have started fading away as many of the sites are gone or have been completely changed and the drivers no longer available.

Your other simple option would be to buy a USB hard drive enclosure/adapter/dock that has 2.5" IDE support. You can find these things from $10 and up. Simply remove the drive from the laptop, attach it to the USB adapter, and connect the USB to your new computer and access the files through Explorer.

Answer 2

This seems to be a driver issue. This can be remedied easily with any up-to-date Linux distribution. Boot from a Linux LiveCD, and then transfer your files to the USB external hard drive.