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RSchierer
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FAT16 hard drive access

a client gave me 2 computers that have been sitting in his basement since the late 90's. The computers do not power up anymore.

he has asked me to try to get some information off of them. I was able to remove them and then connect them via an Apricorn DriveWire connected my Windows 7 64-bit computer. One drive is recognized by the Apricorn by showing a power light on it and hearing the windows default connection tone. The other does not.

The one that does, does not show up in windows explorer. I believe that because these computers are so old, that they are using FAT16 formating on the hard drive. Is there any way of accessing the data on these hard drives without having a computer running FAT32.?
Windows OS

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RSchierer

8/22/2022 - Mon
SOLUTION
Pete Long

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Pete Long

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Dave Baldwin

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SOLUTION
Steven Carnahan

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RSchierer

ASKER
first drive, the one that powers up:

Maxtor model 7170AI
P/N: 17G3100
Capacity: 170MB
SOLUTION
Dave Baldwin

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SOLUTION
Dave Baldwin

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Steven Carnahan

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Dave Baldwin

I still have DOS/Win3.1 systems running and I have had to work on one or two in recent years.  Fortunately, I have the CMOS settings written down on the case or the drive for the ones I have left or I would have been in trouble when the CMOS battery died once or twice.
Steven Carnahan

I remember when Win3.1 came out.  My 286 had Win3.0 on it and it wouldn't let me upgrade so I took the drive out and took it to a friend that had a new 386 and put the drive in it and upgraded then took the drive back to my system.  It worked but just barely.

As for how this question was accepted I'm not real sure what the actual solution was.  I don't think my answer (the "accepted" solution) did it.
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William Peck
Dave Baldwin

I didn't see mention of an actual solution either.   @RSchierer, we're curious what you ended up doing.  ??
RSchierer

ASKER
I am going to try to find a windows XP computer and see if it will read it. I did try bringing up Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management; it showed that 'Disk 4 is not initialized. When I clicked on it, it said that it was not available.'

As for the accepted solution, I have to say that I didn't mean for the one that is shown as being the accepted solution as the one I chose.  Pete Long's first post should have gotten it. My apologies for the mistake.