For questions regarding hard disk drive usage. The hardware, connection, format and drivers.
0
votes
3answers
29 views
Why were floppy disks invented after hard disks?
For those of us who grew up with personal computers in the 1970's or 1980's, the experience was a very gradual migration from floppy disks to hard disks as the primary persistent storage. So, based on ...
0
votes
2answers
78 views
Hard disks in 1977
Suppose you wanted to take one of the 1977 trinity (Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS-80) and attach it to a hard disk at that time - in 1977.
Of course this wouldn't be easy. Not only was there no ...
23
votes
7answers
3k views
What were the early PC applications requiring a hard disk?
I had to wait about 5 years before hard drives (HDs) became affordable enough to begin moving off of floppies. During this time, I remember my desire for an HD being based on convenience. All the ...
4
votes
0answers
101 views
How to use IIgs enhanced graphics modes in AppleSoft BASIC with System 6?
There are many packages that let you use the enhanced graphics modes of the IIgs in AppleSoft BASIC. However most packages like Iconix do not like System 6 so they have to run off disks and not the ...
1
vote
2answers
219 views
Conventional Hard Drive life-span [closed]
I have a bunch of hard drives. From 500 megabytes to a few gigabytes from years around 2000-2006. I was wondering if those are still readable or are dead. Should I hurry up finding an adapter and try ...
27
votes
5answers
5k views
Why do hard drives not use larger platter sizes anymore?
In reading a related question about floppy drive capacity, I thought to ask a question I've had for a long time. When I started programming, all PC hard drives used the 5¼" platter size. There were ...
5
votes
5answers
662 views
Cannot boot off of Compact Flash card
I am trying to fix up an old work computer I have from the early to mid 90's. Everything works fine, but the hard drive makes a horrible clicking noise when it loads anything, so I decided to replace ...
3
votes
3answers
203 views
How do I Secure Erase a PATA hard drive without a compatible desktop motherboard? [closed]
I have a few hard drives, laptop and desktop IDE, which I would like to Secure Erase. I'm aware that other methods exist for removing the data, but this is the safest and most efficient, and it's the ...
6
votes
3answers
421 views
How do you find information about your hard drive in MS-DOS?
Context: I'm running an original MS-DOS. I suspect the hard disk is failing, but don't want to shut it off for fear of not being able to get it started again if I can't swap the hard drive into ...
3
votes
1answer
115 views
ST-506 price: wholesale or retail?
The ST-506 was an early personal computer hard disk, introduced in 1980 with a capacity of 5 megabytes and a price of $1500.
While several sources confirm the price, I haven't been able to find ...
6
votes
2answers
251 views
What was the block spacing in early hard disks?
Early floppy disks had significant spacing between blocks, e.g. a PC 5.25" disk had a theoretical capacity of about 500K but was formatted as 360K, nine blocks per track, with a substantial fraction ...
5
votes
3answers
258 views
What to do about “Invalid media type”
I have an old PC with a HDD that was using Double Space. Since I do not need the extra space, and want to minimise the system use of RAM, I attempted to re-format the drive normally.
After typing ...
5
votes
2answers
121 views
Recover files from Dell PP04L Hard Drive
I have my mom's old Dell Inspiron 2650 model PP04L. She is passed away now but I'd like to salvage some of the old pictures and things she had on there. Is there a way to buy an enclosure and mount ...
9
votes
1answer
144 views
Apple II: What type of partition tables were used?
What type of partition table was used with ProDOS?
ProDOS (8-bit) version 1.2 was available in January 1983, one year before the Macintosh was released, so it is unclear to me if ProDOS 1.2 used the "...
11
votes
2answers
210 views
Order of powering down Atari ST and hard drive?
I am wondering if the order is important, which do I turn off first? The Atari ST computer or the external hard drive attached to it? It is on an SCSI adapter.
8
votes
2answers
357 views
What operating systems allowed arbitrarily-sized disk blocks?
According to my limited experience with IBM clone mainframes, and as far as I can remember, at least in one OS the permanent storage disk space was allocated to users (and the scratch space — to ...
12
votes
3answers
1k views
How can a ST-412 MFM hard drive be integrated with a modern PC?
I have a Seagate ST-225 20MB hard drive. It used a ST-412 MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) controller which unfortunately went to the great bit bucket some time ago.
Is it possible to get this ...
5
votes
1answer
106 views
Connecting to a Digital DSSI disc drive
I heard it is possible to "telnet to the hard disk" on VAX systems where the HD is connected with a DSSI interface. What commands are available once one establishes a connection to the disk?
3
votes
1answer
196 views
Installing hdd on PhoenixBIOS A486 on Gateway 2000 4DX-33
I'm fixing up a Gateway 2000 4DX-33 which came with a Fujitsu hard drive. The CMOS battery was dead after over 20 years without use, and needed to be replaced. This meant that all BIOS settings were ...
10
votes
1answer
267 views
On-disk structures for Files-11 format (RSX11)
I'm looking for an explanation, or a link to documentation of the on-disk structures of the Files-11 format, that is, the format of disks used by RSX-11 on the PDP-11. Also known as ODS-1, the ...
6
votes
1answer
387 views
Where can I find windows 10 driver for old Syquest Drives?
SyQuest made portable hard drive diskettes. I believe they have been out of business going on a couple of decades. At any rate I have some disks and the hardware, but I am unable to find drivers. I ...
3
votes
2answers
225 views
Clonezilla SCSI HDD cloning problem
I'm trying to clone or take images of old SCSI hard disks. I use Clonezilla and at the last phase, it's written "no input". This is for 68 pin SCSI HDD. In another case, I can't see the hard disk at ...
25
votes
1answer
2k views
How can I take an image of a 50-pin SCSI hard-drive
I have two 50-pin SCSI hard-drives that I need to image. However, after spending quite a while searching across the Internet, I cannot find any adapters to convert the 50-pin connector to something ...
20
votes
3answers
894 views
How can I access an old pre-IDE disk?
I have a wonderful Zenith SupersPORT 286 laptop (ZWE-0200-40) whose power circuitry seems faulty and it no longer powers up. I have useful material on the disk which I'd like to extract.
The disk (a ...
4
votes
2answers
711 views
How to access old laptop IDE hard drive
I have an old IDE hard drive from a Windows 98 HP computer. It has some data on it but I do not know how to access it.
5
votes
2answers
182 views
Toshiba T2000SX can't boot from non-original HDD - “02” all over the screen
I used to have an old Toshiba T2000SX laptop, but some day its HDD died. I found a newer laptop HDD that fit in and I could format it to appear to have a small enough capacity to get detected by the ...
