Hard drive ramblings and ruminations.
A few weeks ago I had to replace the drive in one of JJ's laptops and that went well. But while perusing the Microcenter.com website for a new drive, I looked for some other things too. Like a USB to external 2.5" hard drive enclosure just in case I could eventually recover the old 320 GB drive. Found one for $5 and it was a bargain. Aluminum case, petite and rugged.
That got me to thinking about all the old drives I've accumulated over the years and didn't have a way to access anymore. I knew I'd need an IDE to USB adapter for those. But one with a hefty power supply because some of those old beasts really sucked the watts. Much more than the USB max of 2.5 watts. More like 40W. And wonder of wonders, I did find one. $20 at Microcenter.
So I picked that too. Preordered on line for pickup at the store. No worries. Walked in, got my stuff, paid and walked out. Easy. Love that place.
The old laptop drive was totally unrecoverable, darn it. But I'll find a use for the external case eventually. 2.5" hard drive prices are getting ridiculously cheap. 1.5 TB for $50.
So I let things go for a week or two, then today got the urge to nerd-out and went hunting up all those old hard drives. I've found eight so far. Some are pretty old. I hooked up the USB adapter to the oldest, an 85MB Connor, and it groaned into a semblance of life. I'd forgotten how noisy the things were. Sounded like a car struggling up a steep grade with a manual transmission with no lube. And it got hot. I mean, toasty. That was the norm in the 1990's though. And the thing was dead, electronically. I tested two more Connors, 280MB each, and they were the same shape. No wonder Connor is gone. Their junk rotted away it seems.
Then I got to the Maxtors. They worked fine, a couple of 2GBs, a 4GB, a 30GB and an 80GB, with stuff from 1999 through 2007 on them. Backed those up and stashed them in the good pile. They seem ridiculously tiny by today's standards. Don't know what I'll use then on. Perhaps a DOS box to run my eprom/mcu burners on. Those don't work with the new PCs.
I have some older drives but they aren't IDE, they use the ST-506 original PC interface. Anyway we're talking 20MB and 40MB drives on x286 and x386 machines that never, ever ran anything newer than Windows 3.0 (yes, the orphan Microsoft OS. They released 3.1 a few months later and refused to give upgrades to the 3.0 owners. Bastards). They ran best with DR-DOS 7. And that is another memory trail I won't go down, at least not now.
That got me to thinking about all the old drives I've accumulated over the years and didn't have a way to access anymore. I knew I'd need an IDE to USB adapter for those. But one with a hefty power supply because some of those old beasts really sucked the watts. Much more than the USB max of 2.5 watts. More like 40W. And wonder of wonders, I did find one. $20 at Microcenter.
So I picked that too. Preordered on line for pickup at the store. No worries. Walked in, got my stuff, paid and walked out. Easy. Love that place.
The old laptop drive was totally unrecoverable, darn it. But I'll find a use for the external case eventually. 2.5" hard drive prices are getting ridiculously cheap. 1.5 TB for $50.
So I let things go for a week or two, then today got the urge to nerd-out and went hunting up all those old hard drives. I've found eight so far. Some are pretty old. I hooked up the USB adapter to the oldest, an 85MB Connor, and it groaned into a semblance of life. I'd forgotten how noisy the things were. Sounded like a car struggling up a steep grade with a manual transmission with no lube. And it got hot. I mean, toasty. That was the norm in the 1990's though. And the thing was dead, electronically. I tested two more Connors, 280MB each, and they were the same shape. No wonder Connor is gone. Their junk rotted away it seems.
Then I got to the Maxtors. They worked fine, a couple of 2GBs, a 4GB, a 30GB and an 80GB, with stuff from 1999 through 2007 on them. Backed those up and stashed them in the good pile. They seem ridiculously tiny by today's standards. Don't know what I'll use then on. Perhaps a DOS box to run my eprom/mcu burners on. Those don't work with the new PCs.
I have some older drives but they aren't IDE, they use the ST-506 original PC interface. Anyway we're talking 20MB and 40MB drives on x286 and x386 machines that never, ever ran anything newer than Windows 3.0 (yes, the orphan Microsoft OS. They released 3.1 a few months later and refused to give upgrades to the 3.0 owners. Bastards). They ran best with DR-DOS 7. And that is another memory trail I won't go down, at least not now.