On Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 7:31:15 PM UTC-5, wrote:
I just bought one of those portable USB hard drives that plug into a USB
port. It's a 1tb made by Western Digital. (Passport Drive). It says its
for Windows Vista, 7 and 8. (It was on clearance so Win10 is not
included). Anyhow, my newest OS is XP. I plugged it into my XP machine
and it was immediately recognized. So, I dont need Vista or newer. It
works fine on XP. But it comes with included software. Maybe that
software requires Vista ir higher, but I never use any of that included
software anyhow.

However there is one peculiar thing, which makes no sense. The driver
for it, is *ON* the drive. So, if I actually needed the driver, how the
heck can I get to it. That's pretty stupid.

Just to see what would happen, I plugged it into my older computer with
Windows 98 and 2000. I did not even try it using Win98 because 98 lacks
support for most USB devices, regardless of their size or age. But
booting it to Win2000, I was suspecting I would need to take that driver
off of it from the XP machine, and place it on the 2K computer. Much to
my surprise, after stumbling around for a minute, then asking for a
driver, I just hit cancel, and I had full access to that drive.

So, first I asked what good the driver is when it's on the drive I'm
trying to use. Now I ask what's the purpose of the driver all all, since
I accessed the drive from both Windows 2K and XP.

This drive is also for Macintosh. I thought a Mac computer requires a
different drive format. That's even more puzzling!

Any OS will "look" for a driver in the "usual" places (likely folders)...if it doesn't find a driver you have to point it in the right direction...on the USB drive itself. Win98 had fairly good USB support...95 did not.