3 Sep
2009
3 Sep
'09
1:32 p.m.
Late 80s, early 90s IDE drives don't show up on the IDE-to-USB adapters
I'm using for other applications these days. I assume the older drives
don't self-identify their geometry or handle newer parts of the IDE spec
that these contemporary devices depend on.
Any advice for USB-based reading of old drives on new equipment?
For that matter, I'd consider investing in the more professional
levels of drive reading devices. These $30 USB devices aren't doing
it for me. I want a better chance at read dying drives.
- John
3 Sep
3 Sep
1:39 p.m.
On Sep 3, 2009, at 4:32 PM, John Foust wrote:
Late 80s, early 90s IDE drives don't show up on
the IDE-to-USB
adapters
I'm using for other applications these days. I assume the older
drives
don't self-identify their geometry or handle newer parts of the IDE
spec
that these contemporary devices depend on.
Any advice for USB-based reading of old drives on new equipment?
For that matter, I'd consider investing in the more professional
levels of drive reading devices. These $30 USB devices aren't doing
it for me. I want a better chance at read dying drives.
You could get an IDE PCI card..
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
2:42 p.m.
At 03:39 PM 9/3/2009, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Sep 3, 2009, at 4:32 PM, John Foust wrote:
And they'll correctly identify and mount an elderly IDE that
doesn't specify its geometry when queried?
Maybe my assumptions are wrong. I tried reading two early 90s IDE
drives using two contemporary USB-to-IDE devices and it doesn't work.
The USB-to-IDE devices don't let me specify anything.
I even tried on the IDE bus of a mid-90s computer... but come to
think of it, I didn't enter the Cyl/Hd/Sec manually. I expected the
drive to be auto-recognized, but obviously it wasn't.
- John
Late 80s, early 90s IDE drives don't show up
on the IDE-to-USB
adapters I'm using for other applications these days. I assume the older
drives don't self-identify their geometry or handle newer parts of the IDE
spec that these contemporary devices depend on.
You could get an IDE PCI card.. 
3:06 p.m.
And they'll correctly identify and mount an
elderly IDE that
doesn't specify its geometry when queried?
No, they won't. I've personally even had problems with modern on-board
IDE not working with older drives.
I wound up getting an old 486SX machine working with Linux on it just
enough to read and dump some of these older drives. It's a pain in the
posterior, but increasingly less and less hardware knows what to do with
drives that can't be autodiscovered by the BIOS.
5 Sep
5 Sep
4:33 p.m.
John Foust wrote:
Any advice for USB-based reading of old drives on new
equipment?
Don't try. Read them on older equipment. 386s and 486s are, for all
intents and purposes, free. Grab one and read your data, then plug in a
drive that DOES work with USB adapters and do a transfer.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
7:09 p.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
John Foust wrote:
While they can still be had for free or almost-free if you look long and
hard enough, believe it or not they're getting pretty hard to find. If
you don't have one, you may have to wait a good long while before one
turns up (I looked for about three months before I found a 486 on the
local market, and had to pay $25 for it. No, really!)
Even early Pentium systems are getting somewhat scarce, but Pentium-IIs
Any advice for USB-based reading of old drives on
new equipment?
Don't try. Read them on older equipment. 386s and 486s are, for all
intents and purposes, free. from around the turn of the century are still in
abundance and easy to
come by, at least around here. Hopefully one of those will be
good
enough. I use a Pentium II 266 system for most of my data recovery these
days.
-Seth
6 Sep
6 Sep
9:22 a.m.
At 09:09 PM 9/5/2009, Seth J. Morabito wrote:
While they can still be had for free or almost-free if
you look long and hard enough, believe it or not they're getting pretty hard to find.
If you don't have one, you may have to wait a good long while before one turns up (I
looked for about three months before I found a 486 on the local market, and had to pay $25
for it. No, really!)
That's because I threw out twenty cubic yards of them eight years ago. :-)
Fortunately in this case, both of the old computers were still functioning.
For the 386, first I searched for an old IDE drive of suitable vintage and size
that would be recognized by the BIOS that didn't have any allowance
for user-specified drive specs. Then I gave up on that and moved everything
via Zip and floppy.
For the newer, I added a second IDE that was small enough to be recognized
by the BIOS and Windows 98.
I was hoping that someone would've discovered that one of these $30
USB-to-IDE adapters had been made carefully enough to support older
IDE standards... and I can still dream that one of them would allow you
to specify the geometry.
- John
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6 comments
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feedle＠feedle.net -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
sethm＠loomcom.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org