USB-IDE controller for WD Caviar 2700

[thisisamigaspeaking]

I've got a WD Caviar 2700 (730MB) drive that does work that I would like to read on a modern computer to save its data. My Sabrent IDE to USB adapter does not seem to detect it. Anyone have some recommendations for an adapter that might recognize such an old drive?

 

[MiaM]

AFAIK the problem is that modern cheap IDE-to-USB adapters can only use LBA, while disks made before "large disks" became a real problem on PCs might not support LBA. There might be some other issues though, I would think that this mainly explains why disks smaller than 528M won't work, but maybe there were an interim period where LBA wasn't really a thing?

Since no-one have answered yet, I'm going off on a slight tangent and recommend a semi-modern PC. I.E. one that both can run a semi-modern OS and also still has regular IDE/PATA disk connectors. All these (afaik?) can use all IDE disks, including the oldest ones, and they can also do modern things like USB memory sticks, connect to a home network and so on.

If you use Linux, you can just use DD or even gnu CP to copy the contend of the disk to a raw image file. Afaik there are Windows ports of DD too. (If you happen to have a Mac to do this on, I would think it also comes with DD).

 

[thisisamigaspeaking]

AFAIK the problem is that modern cheap IDE-to-USB adapters can only use LBA, while disks made before "large disks" became a real problem on PCs might not support LBA. There might be some other issues though, I would think that this mainly explains why disks smaller than 528M won't work, but maybe there were an interim period where LBA wasn't really a thing?

Since no-one have answered yet, I'm going off on a slight tangent and recommend a semi-modern PC. I.E. one that both can run a semi-modern OS and also still has regular IDE/PATA disk connectors. All these (afaik?) can use all IDE disks, including the oldest ones, and they can also do modern things like USB memory sticks, connect to a home network and so on.

If you use Linux, you can just use DD or even gnu CP to copy the contend of the disk to a raw image file. Afaik there are Windows ports of DD too. (If you happen to have a Mac to do this on, I would think it also comes with DD).

Thanks.

I think the only working system I have with both IDE and USB is a Mac G4. I also have a dual CPU pentium-something but I haven't messed with it at all so I'm not sure it even works.

What I am thinking is that I will write the disk it out to a CF card and then use a CF reader on a modern system.

 

[MiaM]

Check if there is a "dd" command in the terminal on the Mac, or ask in a mac specific part of the forum for more details.

I would guess that you have >95% success chance using your Mac to create an image. Just be sure to not let the OS touch the content of the disks. It might auto mount any FAT partitions, and it would be preferable if you dismount them before doing an image copy.

(I.E. you would likely first type mount to see what partitions are mounted, then sudo umount and the appropriate parameters to unmount anything that got automatically mounted from your disk, and then sudo dd -if /dev/whatever-your-disk-is-called -of /path-to-image-file (and add some parameters to get progress updates).

 

[thisisamigaspeaking]

Check if there is a "dd" command in the terminal on the Mac, or ask in a mac specific part of the forum for more details.

I would guess that you have >95% success chance using your Mac to create an image. Just be sure to not let the OS touch the content of the disks. It might auto mount any FAT partitions, and it would be preferable if you dismount them before doing an image copy.

(I.E. you would likely first type mount to see what partitions are mounted, then sudo umount and the appropriate parameters to unmount anything that got automatically mounted from your disk, and then sudo dd -if /dev/whatever-your-disk-is-called -of /path-to-image-file (and add some parameters to get progress updates).

The USB adapter doesn't detect the disk. I tried it on Windows too.

 

[MiaM]

Oh, I was referring to connecting it internally in your Mac G4. For simplicity sake I would connect it instead of the optical drive (and zip drive if your G4 also has one of those, on the same IDE port as the optical drive).

 

[thisisamigaspeaking]

Oh, I was referring to connecting it internally in your Mac G4. For simplicity sake I would connect it instead of the optical drive (and zip drive if your G4 also has one of those, on the same IDE port as the optical drive).

Ah yeah. The G4 has classic Mac OS not OSX.

I'll just put a CF in the PC with the old drive (maybe I didn't say that's where it was) and use xcopy.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

FWIW, the Mac, if you stuck it in there, might have the same issues as the USB converters. It would not surprise me in the slightest if the firmware in the Mac draws a hard line on requiring LBA support. In my experience PPC Macs tended to be picky about even modern hard disks.

 

[MiaM]

If you have yet another hard disk then maybe consider installing OS X on the G4?
I would be surprised if OS X doesn't support old non-LBA disks as it is based on the separate Mach kernel project. Like would they had gone through the effort of removing support for at the time about five year old disks?

There must be tools to create images of disks whatnot under classic Mac OS but I know too little about them. Maybe ask in a Mac specific forum, either a section here or over at the Emaculation forum?

Or, if you would be able to configure your WD disk to share the same IDE port as the primary disk in your G4, it might be possible to boot OS X and run it from CD, perhaps? I can't remember if it's possible to get into a terminal without actually letting the installer do things or not. If the stock OS X installer disks doesn't allow this then I assume there are modified "live CD"'s.
Or for that sake it might be a better idea to boot a Linux live CD. Since support for LBA v.s. CHS is part of the OS and not the firmware (except for booting) this would for sure work. If you happen to have some sort of Firewire storage you could boot an alternative OS from that.

 

[thisisamigaspeaking]

If you have yet another hard disk then maybe consider installing OS X on the G4?
I would be surprised if OS X doesn't support old non-LBA disks as it is based on the separate Mach kernel project. Like would they had gone through the effort of removing support for at the time about five year old disks?

There must be tools to create images of disks whatnot under classic Mac OS but I know too little about them. Maybe ask in a Mac specific forum, either a section here or over at the Emaculation forum?

Or, if you would be able to configure your WD disk to share the same IDE port as the primary disk in your G4, it might be possible to boot OS X and run it from CD, perhaps? I can't remember if it's possible to get into a terminal without actually letting the installer do things or not. If the stock OS X installer disks doesn't allow this then I assume there are modified "live CD"'s.
Or for that sake it might be a better idea to boot a Linux live CD. Since support for LBA v.s. CHS is part of the OS and not the firmware (except for booting) this would for sure work. If you happen to have some sort of Firewire storage you could boot an alternative OS from that.

Like I said, way more trouble than just putting a CF in the PC with the hard disk and using xcopy.