We run into this all the time. If you have older ATAPI to USB converter, and USB1 port on motherboard, sometimes the old drives will mount. Try using different cables, 40-pin or 80 pin. The old drives will run on either one. For drives under 2GB, USB2 and up will usually see them, but not mount them. It has to do with the number of bytes/sector, and the newer USB standards will not handle the older bytes/sector. So, get an old Mac or PC with USB1 on the motherboard, use Linux, Windows, or MacOS, and you should be good to go. For us it is just easiest to keep a few old PCs intact to retrieve old customer data. Interesting to note that under 2GB won't mount as a primary, but they usually will as a secondary, if you have something larger than 2GB as the primary on the USB port. So you would have to have 2 USB to IDE converters, and put the larger drive on USB1, the smaller drive on USB2. Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 (830)792-3400 phone (830)792-3404 fax AOL IM elcpls -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Kyle Owen Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 2:55 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Older IDE hard drive to USB I bought a cheap USB to ATA/ATAPI bridge a while back and have had a good bit of luck connecting various IDE drives to my laptop for imaging purposes. However, I have a few drives that simply won't mount under Windows or OS X, despite being detected by the Device Manager in the case of Windows. It seems to be narrowed down to the smaller drives, like under 2 GB or so. For instance, I have a Maxtor 7213AT 210 MB drive that won't mount, although an 80 GB Seagate has no trouble at all. The Maxtor is a known-good, bootable MS-DOS 6.22 drive. Has anyone encountered this? Besides connecting it to a motherboard with built-in IDE, are there workarounds? Thanks, Kyle ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3658/6999 - Release Date: 01/13/14 ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3658/6999 - Release Date: 01/13/14

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Kyle Owen <kylevowen at gmail.com> wrote: I have some older bare drives with files on them that I want to access every now and then. Most of the time I use a USB-ATA/ATAPI bridge based on the ISD-300 (In System Design, later acquired by Cypress) and that works fine with most of the drives. That bridge doesn't work with a couple of the drives on various versions of Windows for reasons I have never bothered to try to figure out. I also have a Kingwin USI-2535 bridge and that works with the drives I have that don't work with the other bridge. http://kingwin.com/products/cate/accessories/adapters/usi_2535.asp This isn't a drive power issue. I use the same external power supply for the drives in either case. -Glen