Maxtor 7120AT jumper settings.

[mdh]

Can't see to find this anywhere on the web, there are some 7120 and 7120A drives mentioned. Looking for master/slave, the jumpers are on the top of the PC board (not by ide connector like newer drives). I think the master/slave is J20, just not sure.

Also, I can't remember what happens if you have two masters on the IDE cable. And if I recall correctly, the last drive on the cable is master, the one in the middle is the slave.

Any ideas / corrections to the above. Pictures coming...

 

[mdh]

Jumpers.


Drive info

 

[modem7]

Also, I can't remember what happens if you have two masters on the IDE cable.

One just doesn't do that.

And if I recall correctly, the last drive on the cable is master, the one in the middle is the slave.

You are thinking of the drive selection methodology of 'cable select' rather than the normally used methodology of master/slave jumpers.
Details at [here], which indicates that for 'cable select', the Master is usually in the middle.
Not all drives support 'cable select'.

Looking for master/slave, the jumpers are on the top of the PC board (not by ide connector like newer drives). I think the master/slave is J20, just not sure.

 

[T-R-A]

One just doesn't do that.

Agreed. Most times that I've accidentally done it produced a "no-boot" or lockup response. Never really had much luck with cable-select either; if I did it usually was on a Compaq system and as modem7 states, not all drives even (especially before the EIDE days) will have jumpers for it.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Does this help? FWIW, the 7120 was not Maxtor's best drive.

 

[mdh]

One just doesn't do that.


You are thinking of the drive selection methodology of 'cable select' rather than the normally used methodology of master/slave jumpers.
Details at [here], which indicates that for 'cable select', the Master is usually in the middle.
Not all drives support 'cable select'.


View attachment 1245556

Well, that is odd. Both J20 and J19 are jumpered on mine. And now that I'm looking at a giant picture of the jumpers, it does appear that the settings are printed below the jumpers.

 

[creepingnet]

J20+J19 = Single Drive
J20 Only = Master
J19 Only = Slave

That's how I remember it. The 7120AT was my first hard drive in Creeping Net 1, I ran that thingg till there was not a single good sector on it....it had a very long, and very hard life.

CYLINDERS=936
HEADS = 16
SECTORS = 17
PRECOMP = 0
LANDZONE = 936

That's the CHS I used for mine as well. Still remember it nearly 20 years later.

 

[mdh]

Ok, this is odd. On my secondary ide port, the drive will work. On my primary ide port, it will not. It would not show up in post or after booting. Is the drive to old for the primary? the primary has the same cable as the secondary, so not one of the shielded ones.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Same controller, just different ports?

 

[modem7]

Ok, this is odd. On my secondary ide port, the drive will work. On my primary ide port, it will not. It would not show up in post or after booting. Is the drive to old for the primary? the primary has the same cable as the secondary, so not one of the shielded ones.

Your "after booting" when the drive is on the primary port hints to me a possibility.
Is the following what you are trying?
* 7120AT on primary port: Two drives on cable, 7120AT plus 'other'. Booting from the 'other' drive.
* 7120AT on secondary port: Only drive on cable.

If that it the case, are you changing the jumpers as appropriate?
* 7120AT on primary port: 'Other' drive set to Master, 7120AT set to Slave (i.e. J19 on, J20 off)
* 7120AT on secondary port: 7120AT set to Single (i.e. J19 and J20 both on)

 

[mdh]

Yea, I’ve tried the jumpers. It is an intel Premier/PCI II baby at. Made back when the secondary ide was on the south bridge, primary on north bridge. It will work as the only drive on primary, but can’t boot. (I think the floppy controlling is hosed, get a seek error every time, even with gotek…)

 

[Chuck(G)]

Seek error? Check the function of the "Track 0" line to the controller. Could be that you have a break somewhere.

 

[Sour Patrol]

Hey. Sorry for the necro, but I've got a similar problem. I have a Maxtor 7120AT I'm trying to pull data off of. The drive is old, hasn't been booted since the late 1990s. I'm running USB 3.0, to a Fideco S3G-PL03 adapter, to a Molex and IDE cable, to the drive. I've played around with the jumper settings, switched from 19 to 20, but Windows 10 doesn't detect the drive in My Computer or in Disk Management. The drive spins up fine, so I'm hoping it's just a communications problem. Does anyone have some secret knowledge I might be missing?

 

[mdog69]

To be honest, If I were going to extract data of that type of disc I would use my P3 "archiver" Linux box (Slackware 14.2) and connect the drive directly to an IDE port, and then use dd to dump each individual partition. If dd failed I'd use ddrescue to recover as much data as possible.

I warn you that had a few issues recovering data from very old "small" hard drives (i.e. sub 1Gb) a couple of years back - lots of errors which I suspect are down to failing platters - some sectors recovered, large areas of unrecovered data.

A handful of hard drives moved quickly from "spares stock" to "dispose pile"...

 

[modem7]

Hey.

Welcome to these forums.

I have a Maxtor 7120AT I'm trying to pull data off off ... I'm running USB 3.0, to a Fideco S3G-PL03 adapter, to a Molex and IDE cable, to the drive. ...

That IDE-to-USB adapter could be the problem. These types of adapters do not work with all drives.

Some experimentation that I did is shown at [here].

At post #6 at [here], note the "but for a lot of the drives in my collection under 1GB they simply do not work at all."

 

[Sour Patrol]

To be honest, If I were going to extract data of that type of disc I would use my P3 "archiver" Linux box (Slackware 14.2) and connect the drive directly to an IDE port, and then use dd to dump each individual partition. If dd failed I'd use ddrescue to recover as much data as possible.

I warn you that had a few issues recovering data from very old "small" hard drives (i.e. sub 1Gb) a couple of years back - lots of errors which I suspect are down to failing platters - some sectors recovered, large areas of unrecovered data.

A handful of hard drives moved quickly from "spares stock" to "dispose pile"...

Sorry, bit of a neophyte at this. I don't expect to be doing this regularly; just trying to pull the data from this drive, one-and-done. As such, I'm not equipped with such a Linux box, nor the tools and knowledge most hobbyists here probably expect. Willing to learn, though!

That IDE-to-USB adapter could be the problem. These types of adapters do not work with all drives.

Some experimentation that I did is shown at [here].

At post #6 at [here], note the "but for a lot of the drives in my collection under 1GB they simply do not work at all."

That being the case, what's your recommendation on how best to proceed in a case like this? This drive is from 1993; I seriously doubt it has more than 1GB. Is there a particular tool or technique you suggest? I can always order something else off Amazon.

Thanks for the help!

 

[creepingnet]

Sorry, bit of a neophyte at this. I don't expect to be doing this regularly; just trying to pull the data from this drive, one-and-done. As such, I'm not equipped with such a Linux box, nor the tools and knowledge most hobbyists here probably expect. Willing to learn, though!




That being the case, what's your recommendation on how best to proceed in a case like this? This drive is from 1993; I seriously doubt it has more than 1GB. Is there a particular tool or technique you suggest? I can always order something else off Amazon.

Thanks for the help!

Here's how I'd manage this, granted, I might have different resources....

One way I've been trying to access old HDDs using USB adpaters is setting up a Windows 2000 SP4 virtual machine in VirtualBOX and then installing the Host Extensions ISO - then after that, if in Linux, you need to add your user to the vboxusers group to allow access to USB devices. Then I just attach the USB device with the drive on it to the host, and most of the time, I've had good luck with older IDE drives on my USB 2.0 adapter pulling SOME of them up. I'm not sure about something as old as a Maxtor 7120AT (Which is the first HDD I ever owned - Flight 386 SX - used it 20 years before it died)

Another method is if you can find a computer, even a fairly recent one with a IDE interface, you may be able to get the drive to appear on that system, using a Linux Live Boot USB to connect to it and drag and drop the data off of it.

The one Caveat you might encounter though - and this is what I've encountered recently with my BSi NanTAn FMA3500C laptop - is if someone is using Doublespace/DriveSpace/Stacker on that drive then you may have to boot FROM that hard disk itself to access the data. Hard Disk Compression was a semi-popular thing in the early 1990's on low capacity hard disks like this, and that could cause some issues. I know my Connor CP203whateveritis from the FMA3500C won't come up in either Vbox or Linux, or Windows (any version) because of the Stacker HDD Compression.

 

[Sour Patrol]

Could I substitute VMWare for VirtualBox? I'm sure I can find Windows 2000 somewhere.

I'm afraid your last paragraph went over my head. How would I boot from the hard drive inside of a virtual drive? Apologies, I'm trying to make sure I have this all figured out.

Also: couldn power be an issue? Might it be better to run a Molex from the old 1993 power supply unit to the drive instead of from the USB adapter?

 

[ajacocks]

Yes, VMware Workstation works, as well. Any virtualization software that allows USB passthrough works.

You can do a raw device passthrough to use the USB attached HDD as the boot device for the virtual machine:

How to Use a Physical Hard Drive with a VirtualBox VM | ServerWatch

This guide will show you how to use a physical hard drive with a VirtualBox virtual machine, plus pros and cons of that approach.

www.serverwatch.com

- Alex

 

[creepingnet]

Could I substitute VMWare for VirtualBox? I'm sure I can find Windows 2000 somewhere.

I'm afraid your last paragraph went over my head. How would I boot from the hard drive inside of a virtual drive? Apologies, I'm trying to make sure I have this all figured out.

Also: couldn power be an issue? Might it be better to run a Molex from the old 1993 power supply unit to the drive instead of from the USB adapter?

Old 1993 Power Supply would work great for powering the drive. My USB 2.0 Drive kit I have came with a power supply w/ a SATA converter connection on it so I could also plug SATA drives into it as well. But maybe they don't do that anymore.

I was referring to using an older machine with an IDE bus to connect the drive to and then boot manually. But the virtual Machine in RAW Mode would also work too and might get you around any sort of Drive Compression (if any).