The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/gbeegz on 2025-02-17 01:47:58.
Apologies if this is not the best forum, but I figure the data hoarders might have some direction for me.
I recently thrifted a cool "old" internal hard drive external case, it's a ThermalTake one that can house an internal 3.5" HDD and has ports for USB2.0, ESATA, etc. To my surprise, it had a 40GB hard drive in it! I have already located the original owner, who has only asked that I remove his personal data (yes, I know, he should have done so, not sure what the story is there).
However, in addition there's tons of old programs on here. The HDD was last "updated" around 2009, so it looks like I have files for old versions of programs (Photoshop, Quickbooks, all sorts) as well as games (Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sims, iSpy95, all sorts). Some of the executables require the OG CD-ROM, but some seem to work standalone. In the interest of Data Preservation, Game Cracking, or whatever else these old program files might be used for, how can I go about seeing if I have anything useful?
Would I want to reach out to the communities for those games/programs individually? Is there a good way to spit out a more useful program list besides the directory ProgramFiles? Thanks in advance for any and all advice.