Can Old Hard Drives Be Saved?

[@Endzs768]

i love how youtube always auto generates the captions as 'scuzzy' any time a channel is talking about old hard drives. but oh boy those are the days of before we had loud obnoxious fans in the 2000s we had hard drive noisy harmony

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Lol

[@ahmad-murery]

I worked in a computer repair shop in the past (around 2004) and I remember I replaced one of those big foot HDD. I was amazed of how heavy and noisy it was, they built it like a tank. Thanks

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. For sure!

[@jameshearne891]

When i worked in a computer shop fitting Jaz drives, they came with a standard SCSI cable and a separate terminator module. At one stage Iomega managed to get a batch of the terminators made with a tantalum capacitor fitted reversed so it went short after a few mins, took me quite a few emails to Iomega to convince them of this but in the end they listened and managed to catch most of the terminators before they were shipped. The tant cap was on the terminator power line on the SCSI bus and would blow the fuse on the SCSI card when the cap went short.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yikes!

[@infinitecanadian]

What windows with the white background cause problems? Seems fine to me.

[@Chris.Wiley.]

Like you, I've accidentally deleted the wrong partition a time or two. It's the worst feeling. This is why backups are so important!

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

💯

[@Ramdileo_sys]

@@RetroHackShackAfterHours .. at 4:10 .. Aaron I love Gparted for backup and restore physical/partitions/OS's into VirtualHD's...... but for recover a partition that you erase it by accident in Windows o Linux or even DOS..... the best tool is the old Ranish Partition Manager 2.44...... if your partition was for example in cylinder 0.. head 0.. sector 2.. ( the default .. other systems Like Win7 and up like to start at 32.. 31.. 1... others at 1.. 0.. 1 etc..) and if you don't format it of course. then creating a new partition in that same spot... it will "see" the old Fat tables or NTFS or Ext or what ever that were there before.. and let you keep those untouched... literally bringing back the partition just like it was before... I don't know of any Windows or Linux tool that can do that... don't even Disk Genius............. you can try it yourself the tool is free.. is abandon were this days.. check the Wikipedia page by the way)...... create a partition in a HDD... put some files on it.. then go to Ranish Part and take a look were stars and were it ends ... then erase the partition in what ever software you like... go back to Ranish partition.. "insert" a new partition.. and seating it to start at the same cylinder .. head .. and sector... were it was..... then the old Fat tables or NTFS or Ext info.. will come up.. and let you save the partition to the MBR (don't format it) and that's it you partition is back with everything in it.... it work with NTFS .. and others also.. even when it can Part can't format those on DOS....

[@horusfalcon]

gparted is pronounced like "gee-part-ED" with the last syllable emphasized and pronounced like the first syllable of the word Editor. It is an abbreviation for GNU Partition Editor. It's a good open source tool that can do a lot of good things, but can also do a lot of bad things if one does not know what one is doing. SATA drives in modern Linux systems are treated as if they were SCSI drives, so it's not surprising to see drive devices referred to as, for example, sda (SCSI device A), whereas IDE drives may be referred to, for example, as hda (Hard Drive A), or may, depending on the distro and release, fall under IDE over SCSI emulation and also use the sdX nomenclature. Regardless of type, they are all block devices, and can be listed in tree form from the command line by typing in lsblk then pressing the enter key. Similarly, to list all USB devices, lsusb followed by the enter key. Each of these commands has options for more specific uses, a listing of which is available by issuing a space followed by --help after the command.

[@ricardog2165]

I believe the SATA standard is based on SCSI.

[@horusfalcon]

@@ricardog2165 Umm... SATA stands for Serial AT Attachment - it's essentially a serialized version of PATA. SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) is a different parallel interface which has much higher throughput than PATA. SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is a SCSI interface that is able to also accept SATA drives, albeit with certain restrictions.

[@DieselPLL]

SCSI on modern PC -- LSI Adapter, Ultra320 SCSI 2000 series, (w/1020/1030)(StorPort) works like a champ on Windows 10 with the 2008 driver from Windows 8. ):

[@Torbjorn.Lindgren]

SCSI allows hot-plugging, youshould just need to tell the OS to rescan the SCSI bus for new devices (this is possible in both Linux and Windows - Google linux rescan scsi bus for how to do it in your setup). That should cut down on the time needed for testing. SCSI/Power-on - Most? SCSI drives will have jumpers to enable/disable automatic startup, and many enterprise disks had it disabled by default because many disks spinning up at the same time would overhwelm the PSU, relying on the SCSI controller would then spin them up in groups to limit how many was starting at the same time (SCSI has commands for spin-up). Some SAS disks still has jumpers for this but added a pin which can be held low by the backplane to stop spin-up until it's released to make power sequencing easier.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Now that I am done testing I will try it out to see if it works. When I looked in the manual for the adapter I couldn't find whether this one would let me or not.

[@ricardog2165]

For the bad drives, I suggest saving one for testing PSUs, and grab the logic boards from the rest.

[@maxtornogood]

*Loud Noise Incoming* - I love a loud hard drive but those bearings sound shot!

[@simontay4851]

ALWAYS triple check that you have selected the correct drive before partitioning/formatting. Then check again. At 4:52, i see that Gparted doesn't show the make or model of any of the drives. I use AOMEI Partition Assistant. It shows a lot more detail. It is included in Hirens Boot DVD. Runs in MiniXP.

[@horusfalcon]

When using GParted, look at the top row for the View menu and click on the checkbox for Device Information. A sidebar at left opens which will give you as much detail about the drive, including Model, Serial Number (if ran as root), Size, Path, partition table type, number of heads, sectors, tracks, cylinders, total sectors, and sector size. Be aware that, for SSDs, some of the sector and track information can look a little strange. Here's some of the info on my laptop's primary SSD: Model: PC401 NVMe SK hynix 512 GB Serial: Size: 476.94 GiB Path: /dev/nvme0n1 (an nvme device zero on interface 1, as best I can tell. /dev/nvme0n1p1 would be the first partition on this device.) Partition Table: gpt Heads 255 Sectors/Track: 2 Cylinders: 1961206 Total Sectors: 1000215216 Sector Size: 512 As you change devices (button at upper right), this info updates for each drive.

[@Otakunopodcast]

I have an old Athlon II Shuttle PC (the ones in cube shaped cases) that i use as my drive recovery/imaging station because it has all 3 interfaces. Power supply was shot, had to replace that, about $60 on ebay. The old psu probably could have been repaired, but I am not confident about working around high voltages so I didn't even bother trying and just ewasted it. Surprisingly, the motherboard itself looks fine, no suspicious looking caps or anything. Just a little dusty. I like this machine because the motherboard has both parallel IDE and SATA ports on it. And for SCSI, I dropped in an Adaptec PCI SCSI card. Machine is running linux of course. :) The only kinds of drives I can't read are the really old MFM, etc. ones, but I haven't run into any of those yet. I also looked at USB SCSI solutions when I first started figuring out a data recovery system/procedure and yeah they are not easy to find and are super pricy, also I don't think they have particularly good Linux driver support. (I could be wrong, but I didn't feel like paying a high price to take a gamble.) However PCI SCSI cards are pretty easy to find and reasonably cheap (I think I got mine for $20 off ebay) and usually have pretty good Linux driver support.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Sounds like a great setup!

[@Ramdileo_sys]

at 4:10 .. Aaron I love Gparted for backup and restore physical/partitions/OS's into VirtualHD's...... but for recover a partition that you erase it by accident in Windows o Linux or even DOS..... the best tool is the old Ranish Partition Manager 2.44...... if your partition was for example in cylinder 0.. head 0.. sector 2.. ( the default .. other systems Like Win7 and up like to start at 32.. 31.. 1... others at 1.. 0.. 1 etc..) and if you don't format it of course. then creating a new partition in that same spot... it will "see" the old Fat tables or NTFS or Ext or what ever that were there before.. and let you keep those untouched... literally bringing back the partition just like it was before... I don't know of any Windows or Linux tool that can do that... don't even Disk Genius.......+...... you can try it yourself the tool is free.. is abandon were this days.. check the Wikipedia page by the way)...... create a partition in a HDD... put some files on it.. then go to Ranish Part and take a look were stars and were it ends ... then erase the partition in what ever software you like... go back to Ranish partition.. "insert" a new partition.. and seating it to start at the same cylinder .. head .. and sector... were it was..... then the old Fat tables or NTFS or Ext info.. will come up.. and let you save the partition to the MBR (don't format it) and that's it you partition is back with everything in it.... it work with NTFS .. and others also.. even when it can Part can't format those on DOS...+.

[@Round2Audio]

Does anyone know the make/model of the motherboard? I would like to find the same or similar vintage board with broad support from sata to floppy, ideally also 5.25". I've looked at the Asus P5Q Pro but that one does not appear to support 5.25" floppy. I may need to go older than a Core 2 Duo board.

[@POVwithRC]

Hmm, I do have a bunch of my old drives from about 20 years ago when I was coming of age on the internet. I kinda want to check those drives to see if they are still alive, but the contents may melt my face like the arc of the covenant.

[@procrastinatingnerd]

Boards around the time of the core 2 duo are perfect for vintage test benches. I have a old foxcon mobo and with adapter cards I can connect anything from current, all the way back to the 90s with no problems. Basically anything that can go in a pci slot works on it. So anything made in the last 30 years usually works.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. I thing one like this and a Pentium 1 board with ISA, PCI, and AGP are really nice to have.

[@procrastinatingnerd]

​@@RetroHackShackAfterHours I was just testing some new to me nvme sas ssd's on it for my nas the other day. I got these u.2 nvme to pcie adapter cards and they work perfect on it. So I can still connect the latest and greatest enterprise ssd's to it. I originally built it as my main computer back in 2008 and I still use it fairly regularly. Although I think the past decade of plugging cards into it is starting to take a toll on it. I often have to reseat cards in it, but it keeps chugging along. I do have a slot 1 p3 mobo with ISA and AGP somewhere around here, that's my go-to when needed.

[@infinitecanadian]

'Sweaty Palms' might be a first-date simulator.

[@KrissBartlett]

You know you can make a test bench i used the inside of a case and cut it down works great even have room for the power supply to i have had a ide converter to sata for a few years as well also i never knew much about Scsi drives now i know a little bit from you

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. In my previous video I had a case with a removable plastic mount that was perfect.

[@mickfreeley6054]

Due to the recent price of a 1TB SSD falling near or below an HDD, I now *destroy* HDD platters smaller than 500GB. No more risk to privacy. Of course, larger HDDs still have a price/GB advantage. My NAS has 4TB Seagate Ironwolf HDD, each about $75 US. Never had an issue with GParted Live, and I recommend the *bootable version* of Partition WIzard, Disk Genius or others to Windows users.

[@mrlithium69]

I have that exact same motherboard if you ever need a replacement lol

[@leecremeans5446]

Magnetic Peripherals made a lot of high-end hard drives (and in the 1970s and early 1980s, floppy drives as well) back then. Seagate bought them back in 1989 as Control Data was carving itself up for scrap, and the ex-CDC people developed the Barracuda and Cheetah at Seagate.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Wow. Thanks for the info! I had no idea.

[@charlesfranks1902]

Very interesting.

[@pepzi_]

As a viking ing offered 4 cows, and my loud neighbor to the gods for you! :)

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Thanks

[@rodrigofilho1996]

If u get any storage after 2009, always check for bitcoin.... U never know...

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

GParted can be dangerous. I tried to use it to re-create the partition table onto an SD card, and apparently the card was bad, so it ended up performing the action to my SSD instead. Luckily I recovered everything using R-Studio and rebuilt the partition table using TestDisk.

[@infinitecanadian]

I don't watch Adrian's Digital Basement because he has been known to use parts machines.