Powering up a really old hard disk

Berserker · 25 Jul 2010 at 14:09

I've got a hard disk that's older than many people here - just under 21 years. Capacity 20 megabytes, and that's not a mistake.

What are the odds that it'll still work? Would love to see what's on it before I send it to the tip, but don't want to waste my time or burn the place down!

Jokester · 25 Jul 2010 at 14:14

See no reason why it shouldn't work, if it was still working when it was last used unless it's been thrown about or something. Take it it is a molex power connector it needs?

Berserker · 25 Jul 2010 at 15:09

No idea. It's in a computer of the same age, so the question changes to will the rest of that computer work.

richb93 · 25 Jul 2010 at 15:16

Shouldn't be a problem. Have a load of old HDDs for some reason and they all still work flawlessly! Picked up an old Acorn A5000 with 40MB HDD and it worked straight away

Berserker · 31 Jul 2010 at 15:38

Just spun up a pair of 13-year-old drives (1GB and 2GB). Took a few attempts to get them to 'go', but they did, eventually.

Tried my distro of choice on the machine - Ubuntu. Insta-fail (out of memory before it even started). Got Knoppix to run with a floppy+CD combo, so now running ddrescue on both disks to dump the data off to a USB stick (get that - two whole hard disks onto one USB stick

).

The 20MB blighter is either SASI or ESDI. Don't recall which but suspect the former. That one's next.

Will be able to wipe the bigger disks clean before I send them on their way, but don't have equivalent software to do that with the small one.

psd99 · 31 Jul 2010 at 15:57

wow that is old
any chance of some pics then?

mrtckane · 31 Jul 2010 at 17:39

yea pics of the interfaces cos av never heard of sasi lol

Berserker · 31 Jul 2010 at 19:09

SASI is what became SCSI-1.

I'll pop the lid at some point and take a photo inside. Need that for my own memories before it disappears off to the local council tip.

Berserker · 5 Aug 2010 at 18:56

It's Alive!

Span up first time, albeit a little sluggishly (was fine second time).

In fact, the whole system is working fine - PC, monitor, both hard disks. They don't make them like they used to!

Now I just have to remember how to use it. And how to park the disk heads (this is one of the last hard disk that doesn't auto-park, so the heads just land where they will).

Also a shame that I'm only powering it up to see what's what before it gets disposed of. My house is unbelievably full of stuff. Not Mr. Trebus full, but getting that way, and it's been doing me no good at all.

droyden · 5 Aug 2010 at 18:58

bench it!

Rroff · 5 Aug 2010 at 19:00

http://aten-hosted.com/images/DSC00078S.jpg this is of similiar vintage and still working

note the winchester interface.

They certainly don't make them like they used too - this came with a 13" 800x600 monitor (date stamped 1982 IIRC) and that was working fine too last time I booted it up

Berserker · 5 Aug 2010 at 19:45

Winchester? Check! Mine's called that too.

Oh, and the external is definitely SASI, though using a custom 37-pin Centronics-style cable instead of the usual 50-pin. No idea what the internal one is.

If you've got a benchmark that runs in DOS, I'm game! I think this machine runs Windows 2.0!

Berserker · 5 Aug 2010 at 21:40

Figured out the data transfer. Ugly as hell, but it works...

Take one 1.44mb floppy disk, cover write protect hole, apply insulation tape over other hole, format, use.

Going to take a while doing everything using one 720K floppy, but it works. Have old version of pkzip so can use that first.

Behemoth · 6 Aug 2010 at 00:07

If it's as old as you say then it's an MFM or RLL hard drive. Had a load of those myself up untill very recently when I took the load to the tip.

Would have loved to have seen what was on them, but from what I remember half were dead and the other half were on the way out.