Old Parts

[iolair]

I'm a SysAdmin who has been using an old 486-66 with Norton Utilities 8 and MS-DOS 6 installed. The Norton Utilities have made me look like a hero several times, especially since a lot of my users still use 3.5" floppy disks, and I sometimes have to recover files for them from the floppies. As the 486 is 16 years old, I'm looking for a replacement hard drive to have as a backup, in case the current one should ever fail. (Which it will some day). Anyone have a source for an older IDE hard drive, somewhere in the 400MB - 1GB range? I'd like it to be new, not remanufactured or refurbished. I haven't been able to find a Windows' program that comes even close to the Norton Utilities. And I don't think Linux has any utilities like that either. TIA.

Iolair MacWalter
Director of IT

 

[kmcferrin]

It is very unlikely that you will find anything that meets your spec in the "new" category. I recall getting a 1GB drive when they first came out, that would have been back in 1993 or 1994. Since then they have been rapidly replaced by larger and faster drives. Heck, it can be difficult finding a "new" 40GB drive these days.

If you're only going to use it as a backup I'd probably pick up one or two refurbs (so that your backup has a backup), test them and then you'll be set for the next 30 years or so.

Does the system not support anything larger than 1GB? You might have better luck with a slightly newer system. Something in the original Pentium range (possibly even Pentium II) could probably still work, and the mainboard would be likely to support much larger (and more easily located) hard disks.

 

[iolair]

I was just basing my size on what I needed - I know that DOS 6 will allow a partition of 2GB maximum. My main problem is that in order for NU to work, I have to use DOS. Don't get me wrong - I love DOS. Thanks for your reply. I wonder if I could partition using one of those multi-boot apps like System Commander?

Iolair MacWalter
Director of IT

 

[edfair]

Since small drives are useless in the modern world most have been thrown out. But a few people still have some stored away for the same reasons.
I'm sure an ebay private sale could be arranged if you are interested.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Glenn9999]

Actually, I wouldn't think that you could find an older drive that won't have the risk of burning out itself.

Consider making a boot disk that can load Norton Disk Doctor (what you're really interested in right?), along with other stuff (hard drive diags, hardware testers, etc).

Actually, if you want to make the effort, you can throw together a very good DOS system off of a boot CD (I've done it and that's what I do for my floppy disks these days). You use the CD for permanent storage and a big RAM disk as part of the "hard drive" if you need one for a program that writes to disk.

Even better, if you can boot off of a USB thumb drive on a newer system, you got the full system with hard drive capability to store things, if necessary.

There's really no need to try to hold onto the old system when you can do so much with boot disks these days.

 

[iolair]

Thanks, Glenn. Good ideas there.

Iolair MacWalter
Director of IT

 

[kmcferrin]

Another idea: Get MS Virtual PC or VMWare Server (both are free) and make a virtual machine that runs DOS and has the Norton Utilities installed. When you need to repair a disk just boot the VM, grab the floppy drive, and go to town.

 

[kestrel1]

I use this CD a lot:

http://www.911cd.net/911cd/utils_list/

You can put on various tools for recovering systems, checking for viruses etc.
Have a look, it has saved my butt on many an occasion.

 

[jurgen36]

Yes I do agree, the old Norton Utilities used to be a true live saver, many times over. Unfortunately the new versions are true blooded bloat ware and furthermore make and give many problems to the systems they are used in.

I suggest you use a bootable cd and put all your needed utilities on it.

Incidentally I still use one of the very old Norton Ghosts self booting on a floppy. It seems to copy anything at all. Just did copy a couple of one Terrabyte drive copies for a backup. The new version of Ghost did not like it at all and refused to do the copy.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[xwb]

I remember a time when NU could copy just about anything. It may have been an anit-piracy thing that the version after that wouldn't duplicate certain things, can't remember what. I still have the old version that does everything. OK as long as the filenames are 8.3.