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breeze351

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Data off on old Win 2000 server.

I have an OLD win 2000 sever that I need to get data off of.

I purchased a USB card thinking that this would be the easiest and cheapest way to get the data off the box.

Windows does not see the card.  The drivers that came with the card is a tiny CD (MAC?).

Could this be a driver problem on the Win2000 server?

I have another machine at home with a floppy that I can use to transfer the driver files if this is the problem.
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quizwedge
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What brand and model is the USB card?
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Why don't you just transfer it over the network?
The memory card shouldn't need any drivers, but your USB ports of the mainboard do. Check in device manager whether there is anything with an exclamation mark, and if there is, re-install the PC's driver for that device. Also check in diskmanagement. Maybe that card is seen there, but doesn't have a drive-letter assigned, or it isn't formatted. You can do both there.

Floppies have a very small capacity (1.4MB), so transferring data using a floppy is rather unpractical, unless you have very little data to transfer. Besides, many newer PC's don't come with floppy drives anymore.

As DaveBaldwin asked, why don't you use the LAN?
A tiny CD is just that, a tiny CD. It will only work with standard front-loading tray optical drives...

The only caveat is that the drive has to be orientated upright, so that it doesn't fall out when you try to load it.

Windows 2000 OS AND the corresponding hardware are going to be your greatest challenges to this task. Many things that we take for granted these days were bleeding edge technologies back then, like thumb drives.... or at least one that was larger than a few megabytes.

Since the hardware and software is (obviously ?) working, as the another expert mentioned, why not simply transfer the data via network? If the machine can't be plugged into your production network (like a old non-demoted DC or something that might give an IP conflict), then get a 5-port mini-switch, hook the server to it and another computer to it and then go to town. Just log into the server and copy everything to a mapped network drive you setup on your laptop/desktop.
If you're looking for an option other than a thumb drive you could always get a USB drive enclosure and put the hard drive in that assuming the server isn't running a RAID.
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Julian Hansen
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breeze351

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Thanks for the help, alas none of it will work.  I have my partner running up and down the stairs with a bunch of floppies.

1. The ethernet card is fried.
2. The network has to be reconfigured.
3. Device manager does see the card but wants an updated driver, but when you click on the card to update the driver, device manager stops responding (task manager).

Once again thanks
As none of our suggestions work, why did you then accept the last comment as the answer?

Either delete the Question, or keep us uptodate about the problems you have with our suggestion, and we could have maybe given more advise based on that.
Agree with rindi but also want to know why you can't just take the hard drive out of the box and plug it into either an external casing that usb connects to your other PC or just plug it straight into the motherboard?
Good luck with the sneaker network!
Floppies!!! - why not just have the guy downstairs hex dump the file and shout the values out - might be quicker
rindi:
The 1st thing I did with this box was vacuum it (you wouldn't believe how much sh_t was in it).  It's being held together with spit and bailing wire.  The SCSI RAID still works but I'm afraid of touching it.  The way my luck is going, as soon as I pull the drive it will stop working.  I just need some jpegs and some dbfs off it.  It's not alot of data as far as size goes.
In that case, if it really is small data, the floppies might work. Otherwise you could boot the server from the PartedMagic LiveCD, it should correctly load the RAID controller's driver, and you should then be able to mount your partitions and copy the files to the USB stick via the OS on that CD:

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic
Laplink + serial / parallel cable ?
PC Anywhere ?

Or is that too ancient history ...
Well, I was going to say that maybe the computer receiving the data is too new to have a serial or parallel port... but it is apparently happily taking data over floppy, so who knows.
See if there is a spare NIC card available.  Any Intel 10/100 network card should install pretty easily.
The hell with it, I just have Chris keep running the stairs (he needs to lose a few pounds anyway).

The NIC wouldn't work because I can't get to device manager for a driver.  So when the PC boots, it's going to see a new card without the proper driver.

Laplink no longer supports serial or parallel connections.  Even if they did, I can't tell you if the ports on this POS even work.
Pity about those dusty SCSII connections ... we do this all the time by pulling the drive from the antique and connecting to different device - a bit more tricky with SCSII though ...
I just have Chris keep running the stairs
Just had a radical thought - maybe move one machine next to the other ... ?