GoldenPentium wrote on 2022-08-18, 02:18:

Hi All, […]
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Hi All,

I need to create an image of my ST3145A HDD before I install DOS 6.22+Win 3.11 over it. On ebay I bought pretty standard IDE to USB adapter, with external power supply (this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/361594883718). Attached it to my laptop with Windows 11 and... nothing happened. HDD is visible in Disk Manager, but it is not initialized. Also it is visible in Device Manager under the Disk Drives section.

The problem is that I can't initialize it - Incorrect function, MBR or GPT, whatever. Well, what's next... Next is my main retro build with Windows 98 SE - HDD is visible in Devices as USB drive but not visible as a storage! Playing with jumpers on disk isn't helping either...

Disk is bootable, its surface is ok.

What is going on? Is that HDD tooooo old or what?

This post explains the scenario that you are likely encountering .

darry wrote on 2020-06-01, 23:49:

IDE USB bridges/converters usually only work with drives that support LBA . Small capacity CHS drives will not work with such ad […]
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EvieSigma wrote on 2020-06-01, 23:36:

Do those combination USB to IDE/Molex power brick setups actually work well for accessing older drives? I have a Quantum Bigfoot TX 12GB drive that seems to work but can't boot into Windows (if you do a dir command from a setup CD's recovery console it works fine, though) and trying to stuff it into random machines to view its contents hasn't worked out very well so far, so I was considering one of those setups to plug the drive into a more modern machine and access it that way.

IDE USB bridges/converters usually only work with drives that support LBA . Small capacity CHS drives will not work with such adapters, at least with the adapters I have tried .

As for booting from a USB adapted IDE drive, that will largely depend on the host machine's BIOS' USB booting capability . AFAIK, USB devices must also be formatted in a specific way to allow DOS to boot from them . There is an HP USB formatting utility that makes this easy . I will try to find it .

EDIT: This is the utility . I have never gotten it to run well under Windows 10, so
I usually run it from an XP Virtualbox VM . https://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage … 4-10974082.html

EDIT: By small drives, I mean smaller than 8.4GB . Bigger than that will be LBA . Smaller ones may still support LBA in addition to CHS, but sub 1 GB ones are almost certainly CHS only, AFAIK (I could be wrong on that last point, I have not dealt with NON LBA drives in a very long time) .

Hi there !

This HDD seems to be an ancient IDE/ATA (ATA-1) HDD.

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ … -SL-IDE-AT.html

If it predates, the ATA-2 specifications, the ATA/USB converter might be confused by the returned parameters in the registers.

Before ATA-2, certain values could be either big endian or little endian.
It might be possible that the converter does misinterpret these.

Another "problem" is CHS vs LBA.
Nowadays, LBA (LBA-48?) is the defacto standard.
However, HDDs below ~500MB capacity are usually configured with CHS in a vintage PC's CMOS Setup.
Modern Windows might not expect this, at all.

CHS was already obsolete in the late 90s.
Years before, HDDs used fake CHS values not corresponding with the HDD's actual, internal mechanics to please old PC's.
Then E-CHS ("Large") was used in the 486 era before LBA was established. Worked with HDDs of about 7-8 GB of maximum capacity.

That being said, these are just some thoughts of mine.
I don't know exactly what's causing trouble here.

If you only could get hold of an PCIe PATA controller or something.
Because, back in time, when my first ATA/USB converter failed, I was lucky to get my vintage HDDs to work in a modern PC via internal IDE.

Edit: @darry You were quicker, you beat me! 😁

Jo22 wrote on 2022-08-18, 03:22:

Hi there ! […]
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Hi there !

This HDD seems to be an ancient IDE/ATA (ATA-1) HDD.

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ … -SL-IDE-AT.html

If it predates, the ATA-2 specifications, the ATA/USB converter might be confused by the returned parameters in the registers.

Before ATA-2, certain values could be either big endian or little endian.
It might be possible that the converter does misinterpret these.

Another "problem" is CHS vs LBA.
Nowadays, LBA (LBA-48?) is the defacto standard.
However, HDDs below ~500MB capacity are usually configured with CHS in a vintage PC's CMOS Setup.
Modern Windows might not expect this, at all.

CHS was already obsolete in the late 90s.
Years before, HDDs used fake CHS values not corresponding with the HDD's actual, internal mechanics to please old PC's.
Then E-CHS ("Large") was used in the 486 era before LBA was established. Worked with HDDs of about 7-8 GB of maximum capacity.

That being said, these are just some thoughts of mine.
I don't know exactly what's causing trouble here.

If you only could get hold of an PCIe PATA controller or something.
Because, back in time, when my first ATA/USB converter failed, I was lucky to get my vintage HDDs to work in a modern PC via internal IDE.

Edit: @darry You were quicker, you beat me! 😁

@jo22 Thank you for your insight, I was not aware of endianness being a possible variable in this .

The best way to image one of these older disks is likely with it being connected through an IDE controller (PCI/PCIE) that supports CHS or in the original vintage machine using something like an old version or Symantec/Norton Ghost or Power Quest DriveImage .

I would like to hope/imagine that exist USB to IDE adapter chipsets that are legacy (CHS and Large) friendly . I might still have a 40MB WD drive somewhere that I could use to test the adapters that I do have currently (I have more/different ones than I did initially when I first tested for this) .

EDIT: I just had a thought. USB CF readers handle CF cards as small as 8MB (smallest in my current inventory), so they likely either support CHS, or maybe CF cards are all LBA capable ? Something to check and look into, as passive CF to IDE conversion can be done in both directions, AFAIK .

darry wrote on 2022-08-18, 03:47:

EDIT: I just had a thought. USB CF readers handle CF cards as small as 8MB (smallest in my current inventory), so they likely either support CHS, or maybe CF cards are all LBA capable ? Something to check and look into, as passive CF to IDE conversion can be done in both directions, AFAIK .

It would make more sense for a CF card to use LBA, as they don't have cylinders or heads. Being solid state, for speed I would expect them to be addressed as simply as possible rather than emulating CHS. I'm no expert though, just applying what seems logical to me 😀

darry wrote on 2022-08-18, 03:47:

I would like to hope/imagine that exist USB to IDE adapter chipsets that are legacy (CHS and Large) friendly . I might still have a 40MB WD drive somewhere that I could use to test the adapters that I do have currently (I have more/different ones than I did initially when I first tested for this) .

those funny chinese $7 salea logic clones / "CY7C68013A-56 EZ-USB FX2LP USB2.0 Develop Board Module Logic Analyzer EEPROM M" boards can be used as an USB-to-IDE converter, its one of EZ-USB FX2LP app notes
https://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-AN4051 … s-v07_00-EN.pdf
even sold as a kit in 2003! thats how long I had mine 😀 https://serwis.avt.pl/manuals/AVT5096.pdf

Afaik they are old and simple enough to support CHS, plus you have full access to source
http://www.siphec.com/project/USB2ATA/index.html this one has firmware http://www.siphec.com/project/USB2ATA/cy4611_ … b_to_ata_15.zip
https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/C … DFs/CY4611B.pdf
I cant seem to find original 20MB cy4611b___usb_2_0_usb_to_ata_reference_design_19.zip since cypress was sold to infineon 🙁, but I have it on the hdd if anyone needs it

debs3759 wrote on 2022-08-18, 03:59:

darry wrote on 2022-08-18, 03:47:

EDIT: I just had a thought. USB CF readers handle CF cards as small as 8MB (smallest in my current inventory), so they likely either support CHS, or maybe CF cards are all LBA capable ? Something to check and look into, as passive CF to IDE conversion can be done in both directions, AFAIK .

It would make more sense for a CF card to use LBA, as they don't have cylinders or heads. Being solid state, for speed I would expect them to be addressed as simply as possible rather than emulating CHS. I'm no expert though, just applying what seems logical to me 😀

CFs are weird, they support CHS, LBA, and on top of that have flat memory mapped mode (related to PCMCIA perhaps?)