old disk access

[Peter Flynn]

On 15/05/2019 21:47, rikona wrote:
> Some of the old disks I'm trying to access are likely quite old - in 
> the 250 to 750 MB range. Same connectors as old but larger disks [1GB
> and up] that I can access. In disks they just show up as generic 
> ATA/ATAPI and it says "no media". A couple did a lot of 
> screeching/beeping before they finally decided to run, but none of
> the very small ones show as a disk. What may be preventing me from
> accessing those smaller disks?

How are you connecting these drives to your system? That is, what kind 
of cable, what kind of connectors, and what is the other end plugged 
into? Most PC-type systems I have seen come with only two hard drive 
connectors, so I assume one of those is your main drive where your 
Ubuntu is installed which you're running, and you're using the other 
connection for these old disks, one by one. Is that right?

If my memory is right, PC-style connections for ATA hard disks meant the 
disks had to be configured as Master or Slave, depending on whether they 
were meant to be the primary boot disk or not. To change configurations 
you need to move a tiny little jumper between pins, for which you need 
to refer to a little map of the pins printed next to them, or have a 
copy of the original disk drive documentation :-)

Peter