Windows 10: I have an old drive and no compatible operating system to get data off of it

I have an old HP simplesave drive that I need to get some data off of, it says it's only compatible with windows versions between XP and 7 and I don't have any computers that aren't updated to windows 10 and past their revert deadline, I'm just wondering short of lucking out and finding someone who never updated to the recommended version what my best option would be for retrieving this data.

:)

 

Lost data from hard drive, what to do now?

Well, I'm sorry to hear that it's a WD My Passport that failed on you, @tomhenry ! *Frown
I'd recommend you to try using a different USB cable with it and see if that will help your system to detect it without it disconnecting.
I'd also suggest you to go to Disk Management and see how the drive is listed there. It won't hurt to check up on the health and SMART status of the HDD by running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from the WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. Here's a link to the available software: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=11ZOpD

Give these troubleshooting steps a try and keep us posted with the results!
SuperSoph_WD

 

Compatibility of old data CD

If I understand you correctly, you have a CD with data, not programs.

I assume that this CD was created ("burned") either by you or an acquaintance and is not a commercial CD.

Please explain what you mean by the CD "ran on Windows 95 and NT 4.0 onwards."

What type of CD is it: CD-R, CD-RW, etc.?

Assuming that this is a non-commercial data CD, there are at least two possibilities why you are not able to read the CD on a Windows 7 computer.

1. The CD drive has failed. If you can read a data CD created on your current Windows 7 system, then the drive is not a problem.
2. The data was written to the CD in a "multi-session" format and the CD was not subsequently "finalized" on the machine that created it.

See the following discussion and try IsoBuster

• How to read old non-finalized CDs
• IsoBuster:
  https://www.isobuster.com/

 

Where's the Windows 10 compatibility report?

Hi,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Community.

I understand that you are unable to get the compatibility report.

I will certainly help you with this.

Please provide the below information.

1. From which operating system you upgraded to Windows 10?

2. Did you check the desktop screen for the report?

I would suggest you to go through the below steps:

Steps: If you are unable to find the file on desktop, you can try to check in the system drive.

• 
  Press Windows key+E.
  
• 
  Double click on C: drive (default system drive).
  
• 
  On the top right corner in the search bar, type the compatibility file name and search
  

Please post back with the status of the issue and we will be glad to assist you further.