Booting a Pi from Old Hard Drives

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Today we're trying to boot a Raspberry Pi from some really old IDE hard drives... for science!
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#RaspberryPi #HardDrive #IDE

[@ActionRetro]

Buy a DNA kit here: bit.ly/ActionRetro_MH. Use the coupon code RETRO for free shipping.

[@reabstraction]

Yeah, they are going to sell your DNA

[@solenoids3]

dna testing companies evil though

[@TheSliderW]

Please ask your sponsor what they do with the collected data.

[@rchltmedia]

aight mate, i think you better stick to VPN and PCBway sponsors. contact ProtonVPN reps for sponsor deal instead of shady piece of crap.

[@rchltmedia]

you already know computers but did not getting know your sponsor partner 🤦‍♀

[@Dewey_the_25U]

I would not recommend sending your DNA to any entity that isn't a hospital. They have VERY poor security practices in the grandscheme of things, so be VERY careful.

[@gustavgurke9665]

Yeah, the whole thing sounds pretty sketchy to me. And in the event that sensitive information leaks or is sold, it could affect not only you but your whole family.

[@panopolis8051]

Yes, imagine the privacy/security nightmare when (not if) one of these ancestry DNA sites gets hacked, and millions of peoples genomes gets put up for sale on dark web. Unlike a password or even social security number, you can't change your DNA.

[@herauthon]

Who owns my DNA - can i rent parts of it for research ?

[@SullySadface]

I would download a car, but probably not a person.

[@kquote0364]

23andMe did indeed get hacked, this isn't theory, it has already happened

[@timwilliscroft9615]

The CF card has the "removable" bit set in the drive info. You need to clear that bit...somehow.

[@panopolis8051]

Just a hunch, but I sense a certain cursed black computer case making a come back

[@tomrow32]

I wonder if RISC OS could be causing boot issues from USB. Have you tried a more bare-bones Linux distro?

[@KomradeMikhail]

Quantum Bigfoot drives are notorious for high failure rate... Almost as bad as IBM Deskstar (Deathstar) drives. Simply finding one that still works is amazing. You should run a battery of speed benchmarks on it for posterity. All those drives should be hooked up to a linux PC and run through a suite of tests. That laptop drive specifically needs an IDE 44-pin connector... Those 4 extra unconnected pins are for power.

[@arturofernandez8487]

Probably that big hard drive sucks more energy than the pi, and I love it

[@scottharvey-davies1607]

If you want clicky clacky, the only option for spinning drives is the IDE Travelstar drives..... Hitachi, we are looking at you ;)

[@hattree]

Those were originally IBM's hard drives. Those and Deskstars

[@scottharvey-davies1607]

@@hattree , yes... I stand corrected. ;)

[@jgrimsley2000]

A working Quantum Bigfoot is rarer than actual Bigfoot. Great video, Sean!

[@oasntet]

Low voltage warning? The earlier Pis were such massive pains about this. If the supply voltage drops even a smidge below 5v, it freaks out, even if that supply can put out a hundred amps. Just the couple feet of cabling from the PSU to the USB port can cause the voltage to sag enough for it to freak out.

[@paulluce2557]

The pi 4 and pi 5s both have usb C type connectors. The official psu's are rated at 5.1 volts.. This sort of fixes the problem when the pi boots and starts to draw current as it will drop but stay closer to 5v.

[@ernestgalvan9037]

That “couple of feet “ problem was always caused by too thin wires (much too high gauge) that ‘cheap’ phone chargers used, since they only wanted 500ma max. I used MINIMUM 20ga, and at times 18ga stranded, and ten feet was ‘No Problem, Bro’ 5V @ 5A is only 50watts, 18ga never even felt the power….

[@cjc363636]

The first old HD was making its own 'raspberry' noises!!!

[@potardo9851]

2:50 THANK YOU! You briefly just showed me something I've been wondering how to do for years with my Rpi 3+

[@the_beefy1986]

A few suggestions to make this concept more fun: - To go older, use an original (1st gen) Raspberry Pi which had a composite video output along with a CRT TV (not computer monitor) - To go a bit newer, WDLabs once sold a 314GB "PiDrive" which was a 2.5in spinning drive with a native Micro USB 3.0 interface. I have one of these new in box which I ordered back then but never actually used.

[@CebolaBros]

I'm not sure you can boot from USB on a 1st gen Pi, but that would be a great use of the AV out

[@eDoc2020]

@@CebolaBros The bootloader needs to be on SD but the OS can be anywhere. I used to use an old 32MB TF card for this purpose on my Pi 2.

[@WilliamHaisch]

I think the most quintessential hard drive noise came from whatever hard drive came with properly configured Macintosh SE machines. It makes those grinding and beeping noises that remind me of junior high school (the good parts, anyway).

[@sobertillnoon]

That microdrive is more than a time omb of data decay. Didnt apple recall a bunch of ipod minis because the drives would sometimes burn?

[@FullmetalDragon1212]

Dont know about the recall, but have been in the ipod space for a bit. Its literally the first thing they tell you to do after the battery when restoring a ipod ;P

[@sobertillnoon]

@@FullmetalDragon1212 must have been an urban legend. My only experience with them is how frequently they died in the Palm Lifedrive

[@RyanMartinez]

I think the reason why the CF card didn't boot is that some CF cards have a separate function to make them bootable. I forget what that is. I think you have to change it with a utility and I think it needs to be put into something called industrial mode or commercial mode or something. This also might just be for flash media and not spinning drives, or maybe it's the same for both. I dunno.

[@eDoc2020]

I'd bet it's because of the OS. Every drive booted except the two he put RISC OS on.

[@blodyholy_]

'Bad ideas. They're the best' -- Story of my life, brother 🤣

[@larryk731]

You have a knack for mating some of the most unusual hardware combinations- keep it up.

[@lonewolf31337]

I absolutely love this video lol. reminds me of back in the day when my friend and I would salvage old PC parts from windows 98 and xp computers and build what we called Frankenstein computers. we would have missing case parts, generic this and that. free mouse pads but best believe our stuff worked great for us and we would give builds away to people who couldn't afford a PC. just seeing all them components laying on your bench took me back to them old fun days lol.

[@eDoc2020]

About a week ago I needed to make a USB boot drive for a modern PC and I didn't have one handy to wipe. But I did have a 7.5gig Quantum Fireball without any important data. So I basically did the same thing Sean did at the same time.

[@minivanmegafun]

the churning of that quantum bigfoot brings back so many memories, my first pentium 133 pc had a 2GB bigfoot in it

[@MCrex007]

I'm very sorry to hear you've fallen on such hard times that you had to take one of THOSE sponsorships. Here's hoping things improve quickly.

[@zantuforevers91]

Hey now, I have two computers with working Quantum Bigfoot drives! One of them even is healthy according to SMART! (Neither is the main OS drive though, the seek time is too much even for me)

[@USFrozen]

That Quantum Bigfoot sounded amazing, just like I remember from my first eMachines computer. I would pay solid money for a device that i could put in a modern PC that would give the original HDD sound while still using my SSD. I know there is a project that uses a piezoelectric beeper speaker on a module attached to the HDD activity light, but it doesnt sound anything like a real HDD.

[@JeremyLevi]

(A part of) the problem with the CF Card HDD is those suckers tend to have a pretty long spin-up time. You'd probably need to set a delay before the system polls the drive to giveit extra time to reach a ready state. Easy enough in some older PC bios, but I have zero clue if the Pi can support that, especially when trying to boot off USB.

[@quamsta]

Haha, this is a great idea. Love the creativity in the concepts for your vids. Now you don't have to worry about wear on your mini SD cards.

[@jobalisk6649]

I used to have 2 of those quantum bigfoot drives. Was entertaining the idea of turning them into shoes

[@rorywalters1614]

One thing about the Microdrive: If it’s from an iPod mini, it can’t continuously run no matter what system you’re using it with. The drive was programmed at firmware level to work that way in order to save battery of the iPod. So if you flash mod an iPod mini, it uses less power when it’s running, but consumes more power when on standby compared with the original Microdive. That’s because the Microdrive is completely off when on standby, but a flash storage will keep drinking power even the screen is off.

[@thebig32K7]

I have a 19.2 Quantum Bigfoot drive that was my Win98 boot drive for years. One bit of advice, make sure the drive is mounted at a right angle. My drive really struggled when it wasn't.

[@mar4kl]

Wow, a Quantum Bigfoot drive! I remember reading about those when they first came out, but in my entire career, which goes back to the late 1980s, I've only seen one in person. I don't remember if it worked or not, but I do remember that it spun up at least, and was what you would consider satisfactorily noisy. I also remember looking at its profile and thinking, "so THAT'S why it was called 'Bigfoot'!"

[@howdoesgame8879]

Seeing that Quantum Bigfoot brings back memories. I used a Bigfoot in one of those 2U custom server chassis with I think an old Dell motherboard, one of the early ones with SATA and IDE connections on the board, and used it to boot DOS with HDDHACKR in order to hack old WD 320 & 500GB drives to work in our Xbox 360’s. Kids at school would pay to get their 20GB drives upgraded to get more games, still have it, should see if it still boots

[@squeeeb]

I had one of those Quantum Bigfoot drives back in the day. Came in our IBM Aptiva from like 1999. Massive, loud, and unreliable lol!

[@Barabyk]

Hey! I also daily-drive the same apple black keyboard... 24 years and going strong!

[@n.stephan9848]

Some Raspberry Pi models (if not most of them) have composite video through the 3.5mm jack. I used my RPi B+ or whatever it exactly is and connected it to one of those intercom CRTs from Sony.

[@imark7777777]

I don't know about that, Compaq batched their drives! They would take a pallet full and run them through spin right and then returned the lower grade ones. So if it's an older Compaq drive you're almost guaranteed to be getting one of the better of the batch. I have a Compaq downstairs that originally had windows 95 on it and it's still running with its original drive currently temporally set up with XP I think.

[@brucethompson7345]

Thinks: Oooo I could just build a retro NAS with a Raspberry Pi and some old IDE hard drives. What could possibly go wrong? Great video! I have liked, commented and subscribed. Wait, you can tell I have commented, because this is in the comments... The wackiness is contagious!

[@the_holy_forestfairy]

QUANTUM BIGFOOT ??!! HELLLLLL YEEEEAAAAHHHH!!!! When my Bigfoot died, I always thought I was in a Trench in WWII because it sounded like an MG42 >- Ultraloud -> *BRRRRRR* *tock* *tock* *BRRRRRR* *BRRRRRR* 😂😂😂😂

[@capybara5494]

Dad jokes cranked to eleven, brilliant

[@KirsiVackelin]

Fantastic video! Thank you. My friend Jorma has a theory about the annoying Low Voltage Warning of the R-Pi. He says that they probably just sample the operating voltage way too often and even a small drop for a microsecond in V+ will give a persisting warning. What they should do is average the voltage samples over a longer period of time. Just his theory.

[@v2joecr]

The USB to SATA & IDE adapter normally also includes the laptop-style IDE connector as well, assuming that was working you could have tried using that connector.

[@songsan807]

I still have some old IDE hard drives in case I want to rebuild some older 486 and Pentium systems to relive the old days. Seeing all the things he went through this video just stopped me on my tracks.

[@jhutto1984]

I'm always down for using old tech with new tech in ways never intended. :D I have an old CRT based TV/VHS combo that I have a Fire Stick plugged into via an HDMI to AV adapter just for grins and giggles.

[@RamLaska]

8:38 "This is what the 90s sounded like" TRUTH!!! And man, I honestly miss it!! 😢 I mean, 1gBps read speeds on SSDs is AMAZING, but I just want a little CLICKINESS, ya know???

[@MrDeelightful]

If I'm not cringing in horror/disgust/other by the first 15 seconds of a video then it's not an Action Retro video, that's for damn sure

[@AP-RSI]

Yes, that's what the 90's sounded like. After years of Atari (ST/TT), at the beginning of the 90's I had my first PC with OS/2 and Windows 3.x!

[@CoreDreamStudios]

I loved that the Bigfoot drive still even runs. Have you tried a MFM HDD? The big ones. :D

[@3rdalbum]

You could fit the Pi within the Bigfoot's case.

[@djp_video]

I hope that BigFoot actually holds up. Those drives were notoriously unreliable. The worst I've ever used for sure.

[@gwhizz5878]

OMG !!! Subscribed and enjoying. Cheers.

[@redsummers]

I can't believe you have a working Quantum Bigfoot lol

[@zaxchannel2834]

Yay! You found Big Foot!

[@ncot_tech]

I willingly bought a Quantum Bigfoot. Supposedly because the platters were bigger, it could spin slower on purpose. My mate's 10,000RPM Seagate ate it for lunch 😆

[@Mr.Redstone-YT]

If you make a hackintosh out of a raspberry pi and hard drive, that would be sick... but that's my only guess of that "secret project"

[@polypolyman]

“Flashed onto the hard drive” as a phrase got me

[@lyledal]

It isn't that nobody needs the answers, it's that they didn't know they needed the answers until now!

[@wdd6864]

I got loud Hitachi Drive 2TBs. I have two actually in raid and they are loud enough to be heard through the floor in my Kitchen

[@Sv5YpWTwd9otTA4So83f]

It sounds like what you're looking for is a classic 15K SCSI enterprise HDD.

[@eugenioarpayoglou]

Are you sure the degaussing coil in the monitor didn't nuke that tiny 4GB drive while it was trying to boot? Also funny you said "flashing" a spinning HDD. Nice video.

[@FLH3official]

Thanks for the video! 👍 Now we're all waiting for a video about today's solutions to mount our old SCSI drives thru USB 😉 Please, Mr Retro!

[@lemonrev]

is this the only way to do a backup or to look back to ide ? i mean i still have several and i have one of those desk hardrive ide / sata external devices that allow you to at least examine or to book your desk up, im guessing because of the ide its more simplistic to use the rasberry pie but hmm, thought those pins on the rasberry would have been used for your ide experament but i guess not?

[@LellePrinter82]

Great vid, correct me if i'm wrong, but on your ide-usb adapter, it looks like a 2.5 ide connector on the left side (pause at 13:15). So u don't need the 3.5 - 2.5 ide converter.

[@Xeliman-24]

Hi,I have used succefull hard drives to boot any raspberry pi even the zero 1,not the ancient drives you tested but more recent,the difference is day with the night,you just need to find the right sata controller and a more recent drive sata3 prefered,installations are done like a rocket,the access time of a drive it's much greater of that of a mem card.

[@thegrandlevel313]

I’ve literally come to the conclusion that this was my only option because the hard drive readers are like $40 up from $35, so I thought I’d see if it’s been done before.

[@ches74]

Does that Quantum Bigfoot also make popcorn? Linear speed at the edge of that disc is probably not much different than a 3.5" 7,200rpm.

[@BenChilds]

If you use a powered USB hub, you can use a more modern SATA drive but still hobble yourself by using a laptop drive.

[@dasistdaniel]

a quantum big foot was my first bought hard drive.

[@myleft9397]

Sloopy mentioned!

[@micflynn1]

YOU do realize that the IDE to USB adapter your using HAS a LAPTOP IDE connector built in on the OTHER SIDE.

[@CubeAtlantic]

Some hard drives are legit flexible & versatile but that one looks slowed.

[@WedgeStratos]

I find it a bit odd that you used an adapter for IDE to PATA... when that Fideco drive reader you have supports the PATA interfaces on the Toshiba laptop drive. Not so sure about the microdrive though, CF is a weird format in that context.

[@Everything_and_Nothing_Tech]

Can’t confirm but that micro drive looks to come from an iPod mini

[@RohanSpartin]

Or a Creative Zen or Microsoft Zune. Wish we had SSDs in that form factor. It would make refurbishing and upgrading old MP3/MP4 players easier. I dont 100% trust using CF cards and SD cards as replacements.

[@christopherdecorte1599]

Ahhh the bigfoot i got one of those in my compact p3 computer with original software setup slowest possible drive you could pick.

[@alejandrobellomejias642]

Omg the voice of a Compaq Presario in 1997

[@sufferingincorporatedtm1781]

this is awesome, i have a 160gb drive from an ipod that i did an iflash mod on. the hdd still has some life and it's in a tiny form factor, so i think it'd be ideal for my raspberry pi

[@BlakeBarrett]

I kept waiting for you to install Haiku on the Quantum Bigfoot.

[@MaGioZal]

Man, my first personal computer at home (a gray-market Pentium 100) had a Quantum Bigfoot. When I used Photoshop or Netscape, it squeaked loud like a pig 🤣

[@networkg]

Building a Pi based MSDOS computer !

[@EilonwyWanderer]

I'm surprised that you didn't try a Toshiba ZIF hdd out of an iPod 5/6gen! That would've been a fun combo of adapters too, with a tiny form factor -- but with a lot bigger capacity than the 4gb ones 😅

[@humidbeing]

Bigfoot drives were terrible. Slow, big, hot, and failure prone. I replaced hundreds of them in the late 90s. But man, do they sound good!

[@knightcrusader]

Why did you use a 44 to 40 pin IDE adapter when that USB adapter had a 44pin plug on it?

[@windowsfan95]

I challenge you to install Tiny 10 on that Quantum Bigfoot drive.

[@rager1969]

Mr. "Donny Gan" (or was it "Donny Gall"? I'm not rewiding to find out), that IDE to USB appears to have the laptop 44 pin connector on one edge, as most do. Why didn't you use that? Also did you try that small OS on the larger drives? Not that it would matter, but maybe it doesn't like USB boot, rather than it being the fault of the adapters. Hell maybe it would allow you to figure out how to resolve that.

[@cwaldrip]

I expected you to have a small wood fired steam generator to crank out a DC current to power the hard drive and Pi.

[@derekdziobek5998]

you should've tested the drive interface speeds with hdparm ;)

[@MaximNightFury]

I saw the title and was wondering how you were going to boot System 7 or Mac OS 8 off a Raspberry Pi...

[@nomadic_shadow]

Strangely entertaining.

[@TechAmbr]

"Computational Abominations" omg 🤣

[@psergiu]

Sean, you missed a great opportunity by using that red button contraption and not a proper paperclip.

[@MonochromeWench]

If both 4 gb drives wouldn't boot I'd suspect the problem is not the drives but the OS (maybe it doesn't work with your firmware or can't be booted from usb). I would try one of the minimal 32bit raspbian images that are small enough to fit in 4gb. IDE44 to IDE and IDE44 to CF adapters are completely passive. If the adapters worked well enough to install the OS it should be able to boot. Especially as the USB adapter was already known to be bootable.

[@jburdick1969]

is there a way to boot up a scsi drive using a pi?

[@JohnVance]

I saw the Bigfoot in the thumbnail and came running

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

I think it's that laptop IDE adapter that's bad. Your chonky USB-to-IDE adapter looks to have its own laptop IDE interface on one side, you should try that with the laptop drive, and the CF-to-laptop-IDE.

[@racingctf14]

Should try it with a raptor 10k or higher. They are crazy loud.

[@BeginningTry3200]

Does this have something to do with Linux on the CVS netbook?

[@tomsi42]

My 5 cents is on a Dosbian rig ;) Great video

[@damouze]

The Quantum Bigfoot, when it was current, was the standard against all badness concerning IDE drives was measured. I would strongly advise against it for your build ;-).

[@zachandrobvermaasanddeatha457]

You can't play certain sounds because the hard drive doesn't have the same technology that new ones do

[@ernestgalvan9037]

The head movement mechanism is the exact same magnetic linear thta started back in the 40MB days. Smaller, more precise, but otherwise identical coils, bearing etc….

[@sideburn]

I used to convert old rotary phones into mobile rotary cell phone. Another useless old / new tech match up. But it was fun taking them to bars and proving people wrong (once the loud ass bell actually rang) that I was some kind of idiot with an old phone and saying it was my phone…. Or maybe I was still an idiot but it WAS my phone ya bastards!😆

[@seth8629]

No SCSI hard drives?

[@mexicanhalloween]

you should try a raid 0 of cheetah 15k drives