Accessing data off of old IDE drive.

[xboxboy]

Hi all:
I have a mageia box with a P5Q PRO motherboard, which has an IDE connection.
I've gone through ALL my old PC's and transfered/copied all the data from their IDE drives to my current SATA drives.
Except for my IDE drive from the old family 486 DX pc. As far as I can tell the drive appears invisible to mageia, all the other drives have appeared in dolphin, but this drive doesn't (it is the oldest drive by miles).
This drive is old, so old it is only 424mb (and that was the biggest drive they offered at the time!)
The pc this is out of was simply decomissioned, so AFAIK the drive should work fine.
Any tips or secrets I should know so I can get the data of off it?
Thank you

[doktor5000]

Is it recognised by the kernel at all? Can you run fdisk -l to see it's partition table?

[andrew-lohmann]

Also is the hard disk recognised by your computer's BIOS? You may need to put it into an older pc to access it.

[eor2004]

I'm talking by experience, if you connect the drive to a windows computer using an adapter like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-TO-SATA-IDE-Hard-Drive-Adapter-Converter-Cable-/150505362908?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item230ad195dc and it is not recognized, there is a 99% probability that the drive is F.U.B.A.R. is funny, but I'm serious!

[xboxboy]

Ok, so I have 5 SATA drives, SDA through SDE

fdisk -l returns:

Code: Select all

Partition table entries are not in disk order
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdf: Input/output error


Not sure what that could indicate. Hopefully not a failed drive

EDIT:
The IDE hard drive is picked up correctly in the BIOS, not that I could see any legacy settings to change.

[doktor5000]

Use something like HDAT2 or some similar diagnostic tool to check whether the drive still works.
HDAT2 is contained among others on Hirens BootCD: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/

I'd say the drive is dead.

[alf]

May also be that such types of ancient drives are no longer supported by the kernel by default. Building a custom-kernel with "CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HD=y" could help.

[yankee495]

Yeah, that is an old drive. I have an SATA/IDE adapter and a couple of old computers for this. I bought the cable and used it once.

An old computer I used once in a while to test drives and stuff wouldn't boot. The BIOS ID'd the drive but couldn't read it. It was not spinning and a light smack made it spin up! No joke, it had sat so long it was stuck I guess. After that it spun up several more times and is now sitting again.

If it isn't spinning you have nothing to loose...get your ear next to it and listen for the whine. Chances are it is spinning but wouldn't you be surprised if it wasn't and this worked! I'm being serious, sounds funny, but true.

[doktor5000]

On a related note, on some older harddrive once I also applied a little drop of really thin oil (don't know what the exact term is in english, but something like fine mechanic oil, also often used for sewing machines) on the spindle of the harddrive. Probably has the same effect, without the shaking side-effect.
I kid you not!

That's why I've asked if the kernel recognizes the drive, meaning not only the device nodes are created, but that it read the geometry and partition table.

[xboxboy]

The drive definately spins. It makes that same old tick, tick, grind, grind noise it did 20 years when the machine boots. It's like the old dial up modem sound: You simply can not forget that sound. Oh, and a solid clunk when the machine shuts off.

I'll look into using something like the doc suggested. Fingers crossed.

[andrew-lohmann]

"I Kid you not" - Once you break the seal of the drive exposing it to air and dust then oil it I would be suprised if it will work in any case breaking the seal will cause the air pressure to rise to atmospheric causing the head to float further away from the disk surface. I have never considered trying that I should say. Might be better to leave it running for another day to let it settle down.

[doktor5000]

"I Kid you not" - Once you break the seal of the drive exposing it to air and dust then oil it

Who mentioned opening the drive? That was one older drive where the end of the spindle was accessible from the outside.
Usually nowadays it's covered by an alloy cast shield, which holds the PCB.
Also the stuff you mention about atmosphere and air isn't really correct. There is air and normal atmosphere inside the drive,
there are "only" dust filters at the exhaust holes. There's no gas or vacuum in there, and no special pressure.
Actually harddisks require air to work correctly to get the head floating above the platters when they spin up (hovercraft effect).

I kid you not!

[eor2004]

"I Kid you not" - Once you break the seal of the drive exposing it to air and dust then oil it

Who mentioned opening the drive? That was one older drive where the end of the spindle was accessible from the outside.
Usually nowadays it's covered by an alloy cast shield, which holds the PCB.
Also the stuff you mention about atmosphere and air isn't really correct. There is air and normal atmosphere inside the drive,
there are "only" dust filters at the exhaust holes. There's no gas or vacuum in there, and no special pressure.
Actually harddisks require air to work correctly to get the head floating above the platters when they spin up (hovercraft effect).

I kid you not!

@Andrew
What Doktor says is very true, 100% correct, he's not kidding!

[andrew-lohmann]

I am glad it worked for you. Evidently they are now different to the written off drives I have taken apart.

[doktor5000]

How where those different?

[andrew-lohmann]

The drives I took apart were possibly 40M and 1GB can't remember which now. They were competely sealed with the motor totally inside. What I had read of drives long ago was that they were filled with nitrogen but at a low pressure. After unscrewing the screws I had to leaver the top off to overcome the partial vacume then I found what you would expect a single platter. With a spring loaded voice coil driven arms.

The motor was probably a 8 or 12 pole stepper motor.

[eor2004]

Maybe you're right, I think the nitrogen was used to create the hover effect doktor is talking about, very older drives were not made to spin and create air movement to create hover effect like the new ones at 5000, 7200 RPM's, thus the hover effect of the read/write heads has to be created using some kind of gas to create atmosphere inside the disk for the hover effect to take place!

[andrew-lohmann]

Nitrogen was put inside to prevent oxidation as well. I think the correct term for what the heads do is fly.