41
votes
How did it come that SATA HDDs use ATA while SATA CD drives use SCSI as protocol?
Let’s start by addressing a few misconceptions.
I have a new external Western Digital USB HDD here and I saw in Wireshark that it uses SCSI.
That’s because storage over USB uses SCSI-style protocols....
- 118k
28
votes
Did mechanical hard drives often malfunction in high elevation places such as Bogota?
Most modern hard disk drives are not pressurised. They have a "breather" hole (normally with an air filter) to let the internal and external air pressures equalise. They're normally rated to ...
- 12.4k
26
votes
Accepted
When was the CHS (cylinder - head - sector) system invented and what was before it?
It seems the question is mixing up physical disk access (CHS) with a logical access scheme used at a higher level. LBA is and always has been an issue at the OS level. The fact that some disk ...
- 213k
15
votes
When was the CHS (cylinder - head - sector) system invented and what was before it?
The cylinder number determines the position the read-write head write must move to, the head number determines which of the multiple read-write heads the disk drive should use, and the sector number ...
- 26.1k
12
votes
Accepted
Did mechanical hard drives often malfunction in high elevation places such as Bogota?
TL;DR: Rather not.
Given that regular hard drives were usually pressurized
Fixed (!) drives are not pressurized. If they were, there would be no issue. They are usually sealed to avoid any dust ...
- 213k
11
votes
How to read a 104 MB Conner hard drive from 1990
The USB enclosure is intended for much newer drives. It can't understand such an old drive with no logical block addressing (LBA) support.
The drive needs to be connected directly to motherboard IDE ...
- 28.3k
11
votes
How did it come that SATA HDDs use ATA while SATA CD drives use SCSI as protocol?
But I have a new external Western Digital USB HDD here and I saw in Wireshark that it uses SCSI.
Yes, because (most) USB storage devices are using SCSI commands over top of USB. This is done either ...
11
votes
Did mechanical hard drives often malfunction in high elevation places such as Bogota?
La Paz, Bolivia is higher than Bogota Colombia. In the mid 1970s I was an instructor for Digital Equipment Corporation, and I taught some courses to a customer in La Paz. The customer had bought a ...
- 6,128
10
votes
When was the end of the floppy-only IBM PC clone?
The question seems to ask for several different points in time:
When the floppy based PC was no longer a default option
When application software (games) no longer worked from floppy alone
When PCs ...
- 213k
10
votes
How did it come that SATA HDDs use ATA while SATA CD drives use SCSI as protocol?
I am sure there is a historical reason why SATA HDDs and SSDs use ATA and not SCSI.
One interesting aspect about early ATA is that it is almost directly compatible with ISA bus. For the slow speed ...
- 1,686
9
votes
I have old hardware; what can I use it for?
So, you need to translate the IDE interface to something. Since the controller on the hard drive can't just be easily swapped (can't just put the platters into some random SATA drive), your options ...
- 1,670
8
votes
How to read a 104 MB Conner hard drive from 1990
I never got the USB connection to work, those who thought it was at fault were correct. I ultimately found an old tower running Windows 10 that had an unused EIDE connection, plugged the 40 wire IDE ...
- 141
8
votes
How did StorageTek STC 4305 use backing HDDs?
I believe your characterization of the 4305 is (at least sort of) mistaken.
At a system level, the 4305 probably was used to cache frequently used data. But according to Storage Tek, it really did act ...
- 4,742
8
votes
Accepted
Was there a hard disk type that had a SMART overflow crash/bug?
25 year old recalls may be a bit hard to search but the problem is as true today:
SanDisk SSDs had a 40,000 hour failure
HPE had some that died on 32,768 hours
The more paranoid data centre people ...
- 1,016
6
votes
When was the CHS (cylinder - head - sector) system invented and what was before it?
So the question is how the blocks of data were really addressed in old HDDs? Did they make use of CHS or some other system?
They used cylinder number. Maybe also head number (i.e., disk platter ...
- 6,119
6
votes
Accepted
When was the end of the floppy-only IBM PC clone?
From memory of personal experience and in the UK...
For the general public, about 1988-1989.
For home PCs, I had a fairly large PC-buying and family-age community around me at work then. By those ...
- 3,505
4
votes
When was the end of the floppy-only IBM PC clone?
Exception: Networking
PC networks are an interesting thing. With many variations, of course, they have evolved over the years from largely traditional client-server (cheap workstations, expensive ...
4
votes
When was the end of the floppy-only IBM PC clone?
Probably in the nineties (obviously, there won't be any "hard date").
One major development that marks the shift to hard disk-based PCs might be the introduction of "hardcards" - ...
- 33.1k
4
votes
How did it come that SATA HDDs use ATA while SATA CD drives use SCSI as protocol?
I recommend reading this answer by Warren Young over on the Unix SE site. The question is different than yours, but the first part of his post answers your question as well.
The short version is that ...
- 929
3
votes
How did StorageTek STC 4305 use backing HDDs?
TL;DR: Yes, But.
It is a fixed disk (*1) with a buffer RAM of the same size as the disk. Thus the full content is held in RAM, served from RAM, modified in RAM and written back to fixed disk. From a ...
- 213k
3
votes
How did ‘logically-sectored FAT’ work?
TL;DR: It's all about the Interface.
DOS prior to version 3.31 used a 16 bit sector number to communicate with the disk driver, thus the maximum sector number was 65536. With 512 byte sectors that ...
- 213k
2
votes
When was the CHS (cylinder - head - sector) system invented and what was before it?
Q: When was the CHS (cylinder - head - sector) system invented . . .?
Patent 3,503,060 for a DIRECT ACCESS MAGNETIC DISC STORAGE DEVICE. Original Filed Dec. 24, 1954.
Q: . . . and what was before it?
...
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2
votes
Trying to install Mac OS 9.2.1 on an iMac G3 (slot loader) but no hard drive detected
Try temporarily installing it in another computer, even if it's just to see if this loaner can see a hard drive. If not,I'd recommend a new drive, they're relatively inexpensive, and since you just ...
1
vote
When was the end of the floppy-only IBM PC clone?
My suggestion is to look through newspapers starting around 1988 and moving forward. I remember "The Toronto Sun" paper was basically a computer advertisement tabloid at that time and the ...
- 19
1
vote
When was the end of the floppy-only IBM PC clone?
Your question is a bit mixed up.
Many applications needed a hard drive to run but loaded from floppy disks. I think Windows 2 did this let alone some of our internal software, and programs written in ...
- 181
1
vote
How did ‘logically-sectored FAT’ work?
The IBM BIOS itself never defines a default sector size, it just happens that in DOS the default IBM format with physical sector size of 512 is used for floppies.
Accessing hard disks through the BIOS ...
- 28.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible