ye olde blast from the past IDE HDD failed - adapt to SSD?

[SLP Firehawk]

Hello. My (once mighty) Pentium II MMX 450Mhz HDD apparently has failed. It booted to Windows 98SE splash screen and then said bad sectors detected. I rebooted and it said disk not found select boot. So I guess the main drive has failed again. The system drive is a WD Caviar SE 40GB model WD400JB april 2007 40 pin connector.

So my first thought was to buy another pair of IDE drives and reinstall then clone but then I found an SSD to IDE adapter. Can I use this?
Then I'll just reinstall Windows98 one last time and an SSD will be cooler than the IDE drive was (plus it also has two 7200 media drives).
Looks like I had the c:> as master with no slaves and no other IDE connections on that run since there is no jumper set on the old drive which means "single" or "master"

Kingwin SSD/SATA to IDE Bridge Board Adapter, Convert All SATA Devices Easily to IDE. Support 2.5 Inch, 3.5 Inch HDD, & Compatible w/ SATA I/II/III Hard Drives​

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Adap...002SZDOM6/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

 

[SLP Firehawk]

..

Also, if you don't mind, while I have it apart, my old DVD ROM drive physically broke, so maybe I can replace it with something that works and has a Win98SE driver?
Thankfully it still has a working CD-ROM drive so I can install from

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Just in case the old system drive is working enough to copy it off and thus save a lot of time, do you think this cable will allow me to connect the old IDE drive to my windows 7 or windows 8 PC and copy the entire drive off and then copy it onto a new drive?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1026383-REG/prudent_way_pwi_u3_idsa_usb_3_0.html/qa

 

[Zepher]

Also, I have this IDE combo USB device but I haven't tried it out yet,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0758RP5V8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Ya, I would give that IDE to SATA adapter a try. It reminds me of the SCA80 SCSI adapters I have used in the past.

 

[Executioner]

Have you ever heard of SpinRite? It's an old DOS utility that may be able to fix your hard drive. I used to use it quite a bit when I would receive those errors in DOS and then Windows 3, 95, and 98. I would give that a try first. If you have corrupt sectors, you may not be able to copy any files from it.
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Thank you. No I haven't heard of that. I just ordered a converter to try to connect and copy off the IDE to SSD. If the drive won't read I might order Spinrite since $89 is worth not having to spend all the time doing a new install of my OS, software, drivers. I wish I'd thought to clone this drive before!

 

[Axman]

I found an SSD to IDE adapter. Can I use this?

I feel like you're the person in position to be the expert, here.

 

[SLP Firehawk]

I feel like you're the person in position to be the expert, here.

LOL I wish. I'm pretty much an idiot compared to the smart people on this excellent forum. As I took my PC apart it occurred to me, "hey why don't I ask on the hard forum"
so here I am again

 

[Axman]

LOL I wish. I'm pretty much an idiot compared to the smart people on this excellent forum. As I took my PC apart it occurred to me, "hey why don't I ask on the hard forum"
so here I am again

You're the only idiot around here who can buy those parts and test them together. I haven't seen my PII since my college roommate stole it back before 9/11.

Sensei, you are the master, here.

Also I got that bitch clocked up to 825, badass. Holy shit, they were rated to run at 90 degrees!

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...hz-512k-cache-100-mhz-fsb/specifications.html

People are bitching about the new Ryzens, kek.

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Wow! 825 from a P2? I'll post back with results

 

[Axman]

Wow! 825 from a P2? I'll post back with results

Yeah, but, back in the the day, “stable” meant “It usually doesn’t crash more than once or twice per day…”

 

[Zepher]

You're the only idiot around here who can buy those parts and test them together. I haven't seen my PII since my college roommate stole it back before 9/11.

Sensei, you are the master, here.

Also I got that bitch clocked up to 825, badass. Holy shit, they were rated to run at 90 degrees!

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...hz-512k-cache-100-mhz-fsb/specifications.html

People are bitching about the new Ryzens, kek.

Wasn't the fastest P2 450Mhz? What method was used to almost double the clock speed?
I doubled mine with 2 procs, lol.

 

[Axman]

My bad, it was a Pentium III, I put it together in 2000.

Lol come to think of it, 825 might have even been the stock speed.

Nope, it was 866. Aight Imma bow out of this thread…

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Also, I have this IDE combo USB device but I haven't tried it out yet,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0758RP5V8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Ya, I would give that IDE to SATA adapter a try. It reminds me of the SCA80 SCSI adapters I have used in the past.

You can't really compare an IDE to SATA adapter to a SCSI converter.

Going from IDE to SATA or vice versa requires a bridge chip to convert the data streams and protocols between the two.

SCSI "converters" are literally just connector and/or gender changers that pass straight through. If a device speaks SCSI, it will generally work on any SCSI bus, so long as you have the right connectors/connector adapters. So you can do ridiculous things like take an Ultra320 SCA-80 backplane SCSI drive and use a stack of adapters to go back to 50 pin single ended SCSI. Though, why you'd want a screaming 15k RPM drive running at 5 MB/s is between you and your deity.

I don't recommend IDE to SATA adapters now, for the same reason I didn't recommend them almost 20 years ago when SATA first hit the market - data corruption. The expensive SATA converter boards they had back in the day had data corruption issues, and so do the modern cheap shitty Chineseium adapters. I've tried dozens of them over the years, and never had luck with them, they'd always either immediately cause data corruption, or do it silently and you found out later. They're really only good for optical drives.

And they're really not useful on old machines anyway. Machines of that vintage had INT13h BIOS limits on disk geometry, so you're not going to get away with putting a 4 TB hard drive on a Pentium 2 rig and have it work. And due to often buggy disk routines in BIOSes of the day, using even part of the capacity may not be possible.

 

[Zepher]

You can't really compare an IDE to SATA adapter to a SCSI converter.

Going from IDE to SATA or vice versa requires a bridge chip to convert the data streams and protocols between the two.

SCSI "converters" are literally just connector and/or gender changers that pass straight through. If a device speaks SCSI, it will generally work on any SCSI bus, so long as you have the right connectors/connector adapters. So you can do ridiculous things like take an Ultra320 SCA-80 backplane SCSI drive and use a stack of adapters to go back to 50 pin single ended SCSI. Though, why you'd want a screaming 15k RPM drive running at 5 MB/s is between you and your deity.

I don't recommend IDE to SATA adapters now, for the same reason I didn't recommend them almost 20 years ago when SATA first hit the market - data corruption. The expensive SATA converter boards they had back in the day had data corruption issues, and so do the modern cheap shitty Chineseium adapters. I've tried dozens of them over the years, and never had luck with them, they'd always either immediately cause data corruption, or do it silently and you found out later. They're really only good for optical drives.

And they're really not useful on old machines anyway. Machines of that vintage had INT13h BIOS limits on disk geometry, so you're not going to get away with putting a 4 TB hard drive on a Pentium 2 rig and have it work. And due to often buggy disk routines in BIOSes of the day, using even part of the capacity may not be possible.

I meant it reminded me of it physically, if you looked at the adapter he linked.

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Wasn't the fastest P2 450Mhz? What method was used to almost double the clock speed?
I doubled mine with 2 procs, lol.
View attachment 521385

Yes I think 450Mhz was the fastest P2. I seem to recall that the P3 started at 450Mhz and went to 500Mhz and much faster (~800?) P4 was like 3.2Ghz? I can't remember and I think my Matrox machine is a P4

 

[SLP Firehawk]

You can't really compare an IDE to SATA adapter to a SCSI converter.

Going from IDE to SATA or vice versa requires a bridge chip to convert the data streams and protocols between the two.

SCSI "converters" are literally just connector and/or gender changers that pass straight through. If a device speaks SCSI, it will generally work on any SCSI bus, so long as you have the right connectors/connector adapters. So you can do ridiculous things like take an Ultra320 SCA-80 backplane SCSI drive and use a stack of adapters to go back to 50 pin single ended SCSI. Though, why you'd want a screaming 15k RPM drive running at 5 MB/s is between you and your deity.

I don't recommend IDE to SATA adapters now, for the same reason I didn't recommend them almost 20 years ago when SATA first hit the market - data corruption. The expensive SATA converter boards they had back in the day had data corruption issues, and so do the modern cheap shitty Chineseium adapters. I've tried dozens of them over the years, and never had luck with them, they'd always either immediately cause data corruption, or do it silently and you found out later. They're really only good for optical drives.

And they're really not useful on old machines anyway. Machines of that vintage had INT13h BIOS limits on disk geometry, so you're not going to get away with putting a 4 TB hard drive on a Pentium 2 rig and have it work. And due to often buggy disk routines in BIOSes of the day, using even part of the capacity may not be possible.

ahhh... thank you. I might better back off this SSD conversion. The 120GB SSD arrived and adapter but I haven't installed it yet.
Tonight I found a PATA IDE SSD which I didn't know existed.
https://www.amazon.com/128GB-KingSpec-2-5-inch-SM2236-Controller/dp/B0091T4ZWU?th=1#

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...end_ts128gpsd330_128gb_ssd_330_ide.html/specs
I don't see a power connection. Could that work?
If not maybe I better just get another HDD under 128GB and once it works, clone it for a backup for when it fails?

Dealing with this old tech is long. Just trying to get the darn file to a 3.5 floppy so it would boot involved 3 computers going from flash drive to HDD to CD to floppy lol. My XP machine has a floppy drive but would not read or write to any of my floppies (pre-formatted). My old P3 has a floppy but wouldn't read a flash drive 2.0. My Win7 machine wouldn't write a disc that my XP machine would read. So I wrote a CD with the XP machine and used the P3 to get the file from the CD and write it to a floppy so the P2 could boot from it and start repair process... It's musical computers

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Yes I think 450Mhz was the fastest P2. I seem to recall that the P3 started at 450Mhz and went to 500Mhz and much faster (~800?) P4 was like 3.2Ghz? I can't remember and I think my Matrox machine is a P4

Pentium 2 was 233-450 MHz
Pentium 3 was 450-1500 MHz
Pentium 4 was 1.3 GHz to 3.8 GHz.

The Pentium 4 didn't match a 1400 MHz Tualatin PIII until it hit nearly 2 GHz. A dual Tualatin PIII could hold ground with a P4 in the 2.6-2.8 GHz range.

ahhh... thank you. I might better back off this SSD conversion. The 120GB SSD arrived and adapter but I haven't installed it yet.
Tonight I found a PATA IDE SSD which I didn't know existed.
https://www.amazon.com/128GB-KingSpec-2-5-inch-SM2236-Controller/dp/B0091T4ZWU?th=1#

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...end_ts128gpsd330_128gb_ssd_330_ide.html/specs
I don't see a power connection. Could that work?
If not maybe I better just get another HDD under 128GB and once it works, clone it for a backup for when it fails?

Those are laptop IDE drives, they're not directly compatible with desktop IDE without an adapter. Laptop IDE has 44 pins vs the desktop 40 pins. The extra 4 pins are used for powering the drive. Passive adapters exist, but you need to be absolutely sure you have them connected properly, or you'll smoke the drive and potentially the IDE controller itself. You can't jam on a desktop IDE ribbon cable either because the pin pitch is much smaller.

Dealing with this old tech is long. Just trying to get the darn file to a 3.5 floppy so it would boot involved 3 computers going from flash drive to HDD to CD to floppy lol. My XP machine has a floppy drive but would not read or write to any of my floppies (pre-formatted). My old P3 has a floppy but wouldn't read a flash drive 2.0. My Win7 machine wouldn't write a disc that my XP machine would read. So I wrote a CD with the XP machine and used the P3 to get the file from the CD and write it to a floppy so the P2 could boot from it and start repair process... It's musical computers

The most common reason that a floppy drive won't read a floppy is dirty heads. Either because dust got sucked inside the drive, or a disk crashed the heads. If you hear a scraping sound when the disk is trying to be accessed, remove it and check the mylar film inside the disk for damage. If you see any scratching or flaking, trash the disk and you'll have to open the drive and clean the heads. Alcohol on a Q-tip works, just don't bend the upper head too far up, or you'll damage it.

As for the Pentium 3 machine not reading a flash drive, you need a special driver if it uses Windows 9x. Your flash drive must also be old enough, newer flash drives and USB 3.0 flash generally won't work no matter what you do.
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/windows-98-usb-storage-driver.html

 

[SLP Firehawk]

The c:> says this when I boot "initdiskillegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0"
Spinrite won't seem to work on it, it seems to hang on "working" for 40+ hours.
I put the drive in a startech external IDE / SATA dock connected to newer PC and windows beeps like it connected but I cannot access the drive. But it will allow me to click and "safely remove". It only got this far depending on the jumper setting because otherwise windows didn't even beep

To further test, the old 98 machine had 2 other identical IDE drives in it used for media (non-OS) that I also tried in the external dock and they were accessible. So only the C:> out of the old machine doesn't seem to read.

So now I'm wondering if a hardware bit by bit clone is worth a shot (I'll have to get an IDE to SATA adapter first) or just give up and try to do a fresh install win98SE on a new drive (SSD)

 

[SLP Firehawk]

 

[Executioner]

Note that SpinRite may take a LONG time for it to finally move to the next sector of the drive. Did you use a Win98 boot disk and copy the SpinRite exe over to it? I never had good luck with the free DOS version to work correctly. In SpinRite, as you scroll through the screens, is it moving along or won't move at all? There is a screen (going from my poor memory since I haven't used it in a long time), where it shows the counts and the writes. If that is proceeding, then its working.

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Note that SpinRite may take a LONG time for it to finally move to the next sector of the drive. Did you use a Win98 boot disk and copy the SpinRite exe over to it? I never had good luck with the free DOS version to work correctly. In SpinRite, as you scroll through the screens, is it moving along or won't move at all? There is a screen (going from my poor memory since I haven't used it in a long time), where it shows the counts and the writes. If that is proceeding, then its working.

Thank you. The old 98 PC had 3 IDE drives in it. SpinRite did work fine on the other IDE drive (E:>) I tried it on, using freeDos. After the black screen above that shows freeDos and initdiskIllegal it launches Spinrite program. When you select the drive in spinRite it goes to another screen where it says "selecting drive for use" and "working" and then goes to another screen where you can see the progress and it took about 9 hours on drive E:>. But on the system drive it never gets past the "selecting drive for use, working"- never gets to the progress screen. The drive seems to not be able to start via any means, including my external dock. Spinrite shows it as empty drive, but when I still had the other IDE drive connected they didn't say empty so something is wrong with the system drive.
I tried booting with my 98 floppy and then running spinrite from A: but same result. It hangs on "selecting drive for use " "working"

 

[Executioner]

There is another HD utility that I've used last year. It's called "Victoria HD Tester". https://victoria.en.lo4d.com/windows
Might be worth a shot.
Supposedly, SpinRite is going to version 7, but it's been really slow at a release - years now. I'll probably die first before it gets released.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The c:> says this when I boot "initdiskillegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0"
Spinrite won't seem to work on it, it seems to hang on "working" for 40+ hours.

If Spinrite is taking days to read a drive, the drive is either stuffed, or there's another hardware problem.

SR really doesn't like non MS-DOS operating systems. The best version of DOS for it is MS-DOS 6.22, or MS-DOS 7 on the Windows 98 startup disk. I've never had much luck running it on FreeDOS.

I put the drive in a startech external IDE / SATA dock connected to newer PC and windows beeps like it connected but I cannot access the drive. But it will allow me to click and "safely remove". It only got this far depending on the jumper setting because otherwise windows didn't even beep

IDE to USB adapters are a crapshoot if they'll work or not on older IDE drives. If they're CHS only drives, they definitely won't work.

Newer versions of Windows also have problems with older IDE drives. The last version of Windows that had the most compatibility with legacy hardware was Windows XP.

 

[SLP Firehawk]

If Spinrite is taking days to read a drive, the drive is either stuffed, or there's another hardware problem.

SR really doesn't like non MS-DOS operating systems. The best version of DOS for it is MS-DOS 6.22, or MS-DOS 7 on the Windows 98 startup disk. I've never had much luck running it on FreeDOS.



IDE to USB adapters are a crapshoot if they'll work or not on older IDE drives. If they're CHS only drives, they definitely won't work.

Newer versions of Windows also have problems with older IDE drives. The last version of Windows that had the most compatibility with legacy hardware was Windows XP.

Thank you. The Win98SE machine had 3 IDE drives in it C, D E. My external hardware dock has a direct port (no adapter) for IDE as well as SATA port that outputs USB cable to a connected computer. Drives D and E are thus accesible via that USB cable to connected Win7 computer. But when I try C drive the same way windows 7 only beeps like hardware is connected but won't actually do anything else. C drive was 40GB around have full.
I'm still waiting on another part to arrive to try another idea. And see if I can get a 120GB SSD to work, else I suppose I'll see if I can get a new IDE drive somewhere 120GB or less.
I didn't realize DOS got to 7. I did boot from the Win98 startup disk and then went to A: to launch spindisk but the outcome seems the same - E still works but C doesn't. I didn't test D.
What is CHS only? C drive is actually newer than D and E, at being 2007. All 3 are WD 7200 Cavier or whoever you spell it - 40GB

Side note: I have a nice WinXP 32bit computer that is still working great. It has a 3.5 inch 150GB 10,000RPM SATA spinning C: drive plus 2 7200 RPM spinning media drives. I was plannng to hardare bit by bit clone the 150GB SATA drive to a 250GB SSD drive which will result in 100GB unpartioned space. I have read that XP (just like WIN98) does not have TRIM which means the more you fill it up the worse it works and eventually it becomes a problem regardless if you use it a lot. This machine will no longer be used a lot. But I also read that if you leave significant unpartioned space that it solves the lack of TRIM problem. The other solution was that I found a Raptor 2.5 inch version of the Raptor 150GB SATA spinning drive which is physically smaller than the 3.5 in it but still has 5 year WD warranty for cheap so maybe it's best to go that route vs the SSD swap?

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Don't know if I added this or not but the c: IDE drive in the WIN98SE machine does spin. I can hear it and feel it move, but the data cannot be accessed via anymeans I've tried so far. I think maybe MBR problem?

Unfortunately I hurt disks in my lower back getting it out from under the desk on the carpet having to lift up the desk with one hand and wrestle out the PC with the other. Then bending down to test it out various ways and carrying up and down the stairs repeatedly. Been a prainful, crippled up couple of weeks and now I cannot continue further until I hopefully recover. Uhg. I'm an idiot.
I did find an XP driver for my scanner but then the cord for the scanner fell behind a different big tall desk trying to move it to the room where the XP PC is, so I can't go install it on the XP machine. No way I can move that desk in my condition now.

It's funny because trying to get the 98SE machine fixed so I could keep using that scanner is what started all this. Now my 98 machine is still broken sitting on the floor, my scanner is still unusuable, I'm crippled up, and unable to move out so I can sell my house. So I basically made everything worse. I should have just moved the scanner to the XP machine from the start but I thought no driver was available until I found it later.

 

[Executioner]

I looked to see if I had any old IDE hard drives but I came up empty. If it was a MBR problem, SR would have caught that. Did you try that Victoria software?

 

[SvenBent]

IDE to USB adapters are a crapshoot if they'll work or not on older IDE drives. If they're CHS only drives, they definitely won't work.

This is definetly not a CHS drive though CHS mapping capped out at like 500mb. and Either ECHS had to be used or LBA. but for 40GB its definetly past LBA took over

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Unless I'm missing something Victoria seems to only work on XP and up?
Or can I run Victoria on a newer machine and attempt to connect the IDE drive via a dock?

 

[GiGaBiTe]

This is definetly not a CHS drive though CHS mapping capped out at like 500mb. and Either ECHS had to be used or LBA. but for 40GB its definetly past LBA took over

There were CHS drives in the several gigabyte range, I had plenty of them. Problem with them though is they required a board with BIOS disk routines that supported "extended" CHS addressing modes, AND was properly implemented.

I've had a number of boards where going higher than certain CHS values will cause stack smashing and crash the machine, because somewhere, sometime long ago a programmer forgot to do bounds checking and/or stored numbers in fields too small to represent them. And if somehow those bad values got saved to CMOS, fun times to be had trying to recover the motherboard to a bootable state.

Another thing that could be the issue is Windows itself. Much beyond XP, IDE2USB adapters stop working reliably, probably due to removal of legacy disk access code and/or other changes to the OS itself.

 

[Executioner]

Unless I'm missing something Victoria seems to only work on XP and up?
Or can I run Victoria on a newer machine and attempt to connect the IDE drive via a dock?

If it works on XP and up, then run Victoria on a newer machine and connect your IDE drive and give that a try. If that does not work, I'm out of any other ideas. Bummer you never created a backup.

I had a simular issue when I was still working at our calibration lab. I had setup an old Dell with a SCSI interface to run software for our Super Micrometer using Win98se. When the drive died several years later, I had no choice but to upgrade to XP and purchase new software along with a new machine.

 

[SvenBent]

There were CHS drives in the several gigabyte range, I had plenty of them. Problem with them though is they required a board with BIOS disk routines that supported "extended" CHS addressing modes,self.

So not CHS but ECHS exactly like i said "CHS mapping capped out at like 500mb. and Either ECHS had to be used or..."
I think we are practically agreeing. I just differ between CHS and ECHS and you put them both under the CHS umbrella.

You could also use some of those fancy danymic loaders to circumewent the bios limitations and enabled a software base ECHS support on mothebarods that lacked bios support, I remember having to use one but it was a lot nicer when you could just go full lba and no worry about it anymore

ECHS capped out at around 8 GB
Then you had the first LBA that cappeded out as well, but i cant remember the ranged
Later LBA 48 came which I think is what we still use.. but haven't really read into it recently

and then you had the FAT6 limitatsion of around 2.1GB

oh those times where fun when you never really knew what kind of issue you would run into when upgrading

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Victoria actually detected and identified the drive (WD 40GB) and has been attempting a test and repair for about 12 hours so far. attached is screenshot

 

[SLP Firehawk]

Well. I did a fresh install onto an SSD via IDE adapter. Got Win98SE installed and started installing some drivers. All seemed well. Now it hangs at "Verifying DMI Pool Data" on boot and it will not boot to windows anymore, though it did numerous times earlier. If I boot to floppy it will let me do DOS commands at the c:\ so the disk is available. Fdisk shows it is active.

 

[Executioner]

Could be due to the IDE adapter or the BIOS is not identifying your HD correctly. The error is always associated with a hardware issue.