Backup a ST125A

[ziltoid]

Hi,

i have an old Industry PC with an old St125A which i want to make a backup from. The HDD is connected to a Controller HDD / Floppy with 2 Cables so i think it is a ST506 Interface. For the Backup i switched the motherboard (286 to P3). With the new board i can boot into the HDD and run the dos 3.3 from there. My next step was to add another HDD to the pc and install WIN XP onto it. Now i am stuck in WIN XP and cant find the old hdd. Any suggestions to backup the old Disk.

[Vulcan]

Are you sure WinXP supports your specific (perhaps ST-506? perhaps ESDI? perhaps something slightly different?) controller? You'd have to disable any built-in PATA disk controllers on the newer motherboard (BIOS settings? jumpers?) to (try to) avoid interrupt conflicts, although that may not be the only problem which will be introduced by using the newer motherboard.

In that situation, personally I would further investigate either:

a) see whether a live Linux CD will recognise that older disk controller; or
b) use one of the old DOS file transfer utilities (Telix, Interlink, Laplink etc.) running on the old PC with the 286 motherboard and on another PC connected via serial or parallel ports, depending on what each program supports, what ports are available on the 2 PCs and what cables are available to link them etc.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

[fzabkar]

In the old days we used to backup 20MB HDDs on floppy diskettes ...

BTW, the ST125A had an AT-Bus (IDE) interface. The ST125 had an ST412 (ST506) interface.

ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/at/st125a.txt
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/mfm/st125.txt

[Vulcan]

@ziltoid,

It looks like your comment about the 2 cables might have been misleading, and therefore my earlier reply was wrong as it was based on that comment. I decided to do a quick check on the details of that drive model, and I found that it seems to be a (very early) IDE / PATA drive - not ST-506 or similar.

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives ... DE-AT.html

If you want further suggestions, then please supply photos of the drive, its cabling & your controller card, in order to avoid any further mis-understandings.

Note that you would need to use the correct CMOS settings to use that drive, if it is an IDE drive...

(Just noticed my posting crossed with yours, fzabkar )

[fzabkar]

A little nostalgia ...
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/seagate/

Seagate's old FTP site:
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/pub/techsuppt/

[ziltoid]

I checked the HDD again its a ST125 not an A, i sorry for that. Here are two Pics




I tried it to backup it with floppys but i couldnt read the disks. The Settings in the BIOS work and i can boot from it. Can anyone recommend a Linux which would support an older Disk with controller i tried Knoppix and ubunt 12.04, i think these are to new.
Has anyone some recommendations?

[fzabkar]

FWIW ...

NCL 5525, NCL 5526 Hard Disk/Floppy Controller Settings and Configuration:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-f ... 5-NCL.html

ISTM that JP1 and JP4 should be open to configure the FDC at its standard ISA address.

[ziltoid]

Thx for the Infos guys!

I finally made my Backup. Here is how:

On a different PC (WIN8)
install Virtualbox.
download the Freedos 1.1 Installer CD (http://www.freedos.org/download/download/fd11src.iso)
get the Disk Number (Computer Managment -> Disk Managment)
make a link for a bootable HDD for the Target PC (http://www.yourhelpcenter.de/2010/02/ei ... stallieren)
in an elevated (as Admin) shell go to the VB folder (cd "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox")
create the link in the shell; X = Disk Number (VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename c:\realhdd.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDriveX)
Make a new VM with the raw HDD and install Freedos on it (use the FreeDos iso)
Swap the Disk into the target PC, make a backup, swap it again and then copy it somewhere safe

I hope the procedure is understandable

[Vulcan]

I have just seen your updates & photos - glad you found a way to do this, now that the drive model info has been corrected.

Hope you have checked that the data in your new "backup" is correct e.g. files readable and their contents are valid.

[fzabkar]

ISTM that finding the problem with the floppy drive/diskettes may have been a lot easier, but nice work in any case.