Got an old (working) hard drive laying around and not sure what good it is any more?
If you are like me, and frequently have to run diagnostics or attempt data recovery on a variety of systems (MS, Unix/Linux), that old drive can become a cool addition to the old tool box.
I loaded an old Western Digital with Caldera DrDos 7.03 (free download) and a utility called LREAD for DOS (also free download).....can now plug this old drive in, set the drive in the box to "slave", boot to my drive and get to just about any MS/Unix/Linux files on that system even if the original drive has a screwed up boot sector. (LREAD also lets you edit the files.)
This old HD is also a great place to store my library of driver files and other utilities. Sure, I have burned that stuff onto CD and have flop copies of some of it, but not every machine that I work on has a functional CD ROM or even a functional A drive, for that matter. I have even used the thing to replace large OS files that had been damaged or corrupted by viruses, etc. without having to actually boot up the OS itself.
I also keep both a PCI and IDE controller card in the toolbox with this old HD just in case the system being worked on has only SCSI drives.
Another cool utility that I sometimes use is called MacDrive 2000. It lets you read/write files between MAC's and PC's. (Wish there was a Linux version...). There is a free demo, and the full version is not expensive.
I would appreciate any input and suggestions from anyone regarding additional utilities, etc. that I could load onto this old half-gig platter. So far, this formerly retired piece of hardware has really been a life-saver.
Best to All of You.....
Sleeping Dog
