HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi there,

After gaining access to the files on a Macintosh PowerBook G3 (year 1999) through Apple Open Firmware, I would like to clone its internal hard drive.

As I explained it here, the hard drive starts spinning only if within the Macintosh PowerBook.
I cannot use it with an external dock. Hence, I have to clone the hard drive from within the laptop.

I could partially clone it using the "dd" command from my live CD of "systemRescueCD PPC 0.2.0", which is the version of systemRescueCD for PowerPC architectures.

As this distro doesn't have the ddrescue utility to deal with bad sectors, I had to use dd, which failed after about half the hard drive was cloned.

Would you have a Linux live distro to recommend, which would both support PowerPC architecture and coming with ddrescue or equivalent?

Nota Bene: From year 1999, the PowerBook G3 can boot from CD without problem, but doesn't support booting from USB.

What's stopping you from using a sata - ide adaptor and cloning it using any of the usual data recovery tools or hddsuperclone / ddrescue. I assume you don't have any pro tools with ide interfaces.

From what I saw in the other thread the only other attempts have been with a usb dock. I'm struggling to see why it would only work in a powerbook.

Lardman wrote:From what I saw in the other thread the only other attempts have been with a usb dock. I'm struggling to see why it would only work in a powerbook.

Initially I thought it may have been a PUIS issue, but I don't think so. Perhaps this is one of those firmware locked HDDs that are sometimes found in DVRs and security systems.

fzabkar wrote:Initially I thought it may have been a PUIS issue, but I don't think so. Perhaps this is one of those firmware locked HDDs that are sometimes found in DVRs and security systems.

Unlikely after a PCB swap and on a drive that old. I've seen similar presentation on password protected drives though. But my money would still be on a jumpers or a problematic budget usb dock / adaptor.

Something to check if it hasn't been - an adapter should cost less than a decent pint.

SOSdonnees wrote:Hi there,
As I explained it here, the hard drive starts spinning only if within the Macintosh PowerBook.
I cannot use it with an external dock. Hence, I have to clone the hard drive from within the laptop.

Sorry, above information was inaccurate.

I confirm that had no success for the IBM model DBCA-204860 to spin with the Sharkoon QuickPort Combo eSATA dock, despite I have been successfully using this dock to test 99% if not 100% of the IDE hard drives listed on https://drive-for-parts.com/.
I can confirm also confirm that a 10GB IBM Travelstar IC25N10ATDA04-0 from year 2001 is instantly spinning when attached to it.
Maybe does this dock have a bug for drives before year 2000 .

I tested the hard drive in other old laptops (Acer Aspire 1200 and Fujitsu Amilo L1310G), both from the Windows XP era, and I can confirm the hard drive is spinning in both. So, not only the Macintosh PowerBook G3.

Putting the drive within the Fujitsu Amilo L1310G, I could start cloning the hard drive with ddrescue 1.15 from a live CD.
But the drive has S.M.A.R.T. issues, but when the drive becomes unresponsive, ddrescue 1.15 is often unresponsive to aborting through Ctrl+C.

Currently burning a live USB with more modern data recovery tools, for 32-bit architectures.