old disk access

[rikona]

On Wed, 15 May 2019 21:58:40 +0100
Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:

> 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? 

I'm using a Vantec IDE/SATA to USB3 adapter, plugged into my Ubuntu
16.04 box. It has 3 different disk connectors on the adapter, for
different kinds of disks. I've been able to see and copy from about a
dozen old IDE and SATA drives. I copy a bit from these old drives to a
second USB3, a Sabrent HD docking station with a 2TB SATA drive in
there.

> 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?

No direct connection to the MB. Case stays closed. :-)

> 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 :-)

Some do have these jumpers but docs are long gone. :-( Some may have
been in a comp with multiple drives - I vaguely remember that this may
need jumper changes. Any thoughts as to how they should be configured to
run in the above USB configuration?

> 
> Peter
>