transfer from external 3.5 drive

is it posible to transfer an external 3.5 1.4mb diskette files, back to the same 3.5 external drive? I am using a vista 32 bit system

Hi pastorjoseph,

Welcome to Vista Forums!

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the situation. What kind of external drive is the 3.5 drive - is it an external hard drive or an external 1.4mb diskette drive? What really has me confused is your saying "back to the same 3.5 external drive." If the former, then you need something to read the 1.4mb disks (on the PC or a separate drive) and if the PC sees both drives then I see no reason you can't transfer from the 1.4mb disks to the external drive. If the latter, then AFAIK the device has no separate memory and there's nowhere on it to tranfer any data to (except to a 1.4mb disk) - but then it really isn't on the drive but rather is on the disk.

Could you please clarify the situation and then I will do my best to try to answer your question. Have you already tried this and it doesn't work (and, if so, what's the problem and/or error message)? If an external disk drive, is it not showing up on the PC when you attach it or does it appear but when you insert a disk, the contents don't appear?

I'm sorry if I'm just not getting it, but if you could explain further then perhaps I will understand the question or the problem and be able to help you. At this point, I am mostly confused about what you are trying to do using what equipment and what problems you are having doing it. What is the objective you are trying to accomplish (beyond what you stated) - I mean what exactly are you trying to do here? Are you perhaps trying to make duplicates of 1.4MB disks to handout in a training class (as I once did when conducting Word and Excel training classes as a volunteer and was not allowed to permit the students to store data on the hard drives) or create backup disks or simply change to newer disks because you are afraid the older ones are now too old and dont' want to risk them going bad or create copies for someone else?

Thanks and good luck!

Lorien said:

Hi pastorjoseph,

Welcome to Vista Forums!

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the situation. What kind of external drive is the 3.5 drive - is it an external hard drive or an external 1.4mb diskette drive? What really has me confused is your saying "back to the same 3.5 external drive." If the former, then you need something to read the 1.4mb disks (on the PC or a separate drive) and if the PC sees both drives then I see no reason you can't transfer from the 1.4mb disks to the external drive. If the latter, then AFAIK the device has no separate memory and there's nowhere on it to tranfer any data to (except to a 1.4mb disk) - but then it really isn't on the drive but rather is on the disk.

Could you please clarify the situation and then I will do my best to try to answer your question. Have you already tried this and it doesn't work (and, if so, what's the problem and/or error message)? If an external disk drive, is it not showing up on the PC when you attach it or does it appear but when you insert a disk, the contents don't appear?

I'm sorry if I'm just not getting it, but if you could explain further then perhaps I will understand the question or the problem and be able to help you. At this point, I am mostly confused about what you are trying to do using what equipment and what problems you are having doing it. What is the objective you are trying to accomplish (beyond what you stated) - I mean what exactly are you trying to do here?

Thanks and good luck!

Click to expand...

I think he means copy the data off the original diskette to hard drive and put the data on a different diskette ;-)
eg/ copy one disk to another using the same drive

Dave

Hi pastorjoseph,

@Thanks, Dave.

If Dave is correct (and based on that assumption), then yes, it certainly can be done provided the external disk drive is recognized and can be read by the computer and the files on the disks are compatible with Windows (can be copied and pasted properly) - but I suspect both will turn out just fine because the chances of having such a problem are extremely rare (and I quite frankly have never seen it, but I suppose it is possible - especially if you used some type of 3rd party encryption program to create the disks).

All you would need to do is attach the drive (I assume it's USB) and insert the disk. If it attaches in some other way, you need to confirm you have a proper connector and may also need to install drivers - but I personally have never seen such a drive that is anything but USB (so post back if that's the case with information about the connector and more details about the drive and the computer (manufacturer, make, and model for each) and we'll help you with that process. The same applies if the disks are encrypted as I'm not 100% certain encrypted disks can be copied using normal procedures and may need to first be decrypted - meaning we'd need the encryption software and the encryption keys to install on the computer (and it would need to be compatible with Vista) - but let's leave that be for now (and hopefully for good) unless you tell us it is applicable.

Go to Windows Explorer and create a new folder in Documents called whatever you want to name it. Now go to the external drive (whatever it was named and whatever letter it was given) and select all the contents and copy them and then go to the new folder and paste them there. Verify that the contents are in the new folder in Documents and can be accessed and are fine. Now go back to the disk drive and, since you're sure the contents are OK on your hard drive, you can select all and delete to clear the disk (if you want to do so - that's up to you). Now you can remove the disk and insert a new disk. Make sure it is formatted (that it can be seen in Windows Explorer) and contains nothing you want to save (to make sure you didn't pick a used disk instead of a new one). Since the last thing you copied was the contents of the old disk, all you need to do now is paste the contents to the new disk and you should now have a complete copy of the old disk. Test it to make sure you can access the files. Once certain, you are almost done.

If you want, you can now delete the backup copy of the disk you made in the new folder in Documents on the hard drive (your choice). You are now done. The data from the original disk has been copied (or moved) to the new disk. You can now add additional disks and repeat the verification and paste process to create additional copies if you wish (if so, I'd keep the copy in the folder in Documents until you are totally done with whatever you want to do).

Some of these steps are not absolutely required and there are faster ways to do this (e.g., copying to the hard drive isn't really necessary) - but I wanted to give you a way I felt was safer to protect you from most mishaps.

If we're completely off-base and you're asking something totally different, please see my first post and provide us with what we need to know to understand the situation and assist you.

I hope this helps.

Good luck!