question about setup of MFM drive with WD1006V-MM2 board

[Cloyd]

Hi all,

I'm attempting to get data off an MFM drive in an (30 year old) 386 machine, while on a brief trip to my parents' attic.

The controller card is a WD1006V-MM2. The drive is connected to the board and is a magnetic peripherals Inc, MN 94205--051. It has been connected to it since 1992. The computer turns on and has various problems that I hope to sort out after some troubleshooting (bad ram stick etc) but that's another story.

My question here has to do with the risks of disconnecting and reconnecting MFM drives to the controller board. I'm not familiar with MFM drives. I've read that when you connect a drive to a board you have to enter manual info that is physically printed on the disk, in order for the controller to recognize the drive. But I'm not clear on whether that process also requires formatting the drive, or means the data on the drive will get wiped in some way?

One reason I ask is because I'd like to be able to test the machine with the drive disconnected, and/or put the controller card in a slightly less glitchy machine (a 486 that has been sitting here collecting dust but also works) and I don't want to risk losing the data on the drive in the process.

The second reason I ask this is because I have a second MFM drive that I want to try to connect to this board to recover its contents, and I don't want to risk wiping that one either when I set it up.

So, in summary, can you swap drives on an MFM controller card without losing the data?

Thanks in advance for any help... obviously I'm out of my depth here!

[Lardman]

You wont damage the data on the drive by just unplugging it. Have you power it on yet does it still spin even?

[vx1]

The HDD settings you enter in the BIOS SETUP(CYL/Head/Sectors) and you don't lose data just doing that. If you don't enter the correct information, it will just not recognize the HDD and ask for the correct information.

[Cloyd]

You wont damage the data on the drive by just unplugging it. Have you power it on yet does it still spin even?

Hi and thanks for the reply. I have two drives, I haven't tried the one in the closet yet, but the drive that's currently plugged in does spin up, and its red light does come on. I'm worried there's something wrong with it though, because after it spins up, I can hear a knock sound (just one) that sounds a little loud to my ear, even for an older drive. It then sounds like it tries to spin at a faster rate (the frequency of the sound just rises up a little higher), and then spins down and stays at what sounds like a slower spin speed, with the red light just blinking slowly. There are no nasty grinding sounds, just that one snap/knock sound.

This is accompanied by one of two error messages, sometimes it just says "hard disk failure" (very helpful I know), and sometimes I get an error that says "i/o card parity interrupt" with the option to reboot, continue, or "shut off NMI". I don't know what NMI is so I didn't try that yet.

I guess there's a high chance there's something physically wrong with the drive, so if you have any insight as to what those sounds might mean, that would be super welcome. I do have some tools here, and could try to open the drive if there are some things I can try. I was planning on doing a separate post about that if it gets to that, but first I figured first I'd try to eliminate all other variables by swapping out the controller card (I brought a newly purchased one with me, identical model), cleaning all the connectors, and trying it in this other 486 machine.

[Cloyd]

The HDD settings you enter in the BIOS SETUP(CYL/Head/Sectors) and you don't lose data just doing that. If you don't enter the correct information, it will just not recognize the HDD and ask for the correct information.

Ok great! Thanks so much.