I'm attempting to recover data from an ancient SCSI drive as well as some boxes of 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disks. The SCSI drive uses the HS50 - 50 Pin Ribbon format, like this:

 

 

Are there any SCSI to USB, SCSI to PCI, or SCSI to anything else cables/adapters worth their salt? I've seen products ranging from $10 to $300, but I have no prior experience with any of these things. I do have the 50 pin SCSI cable that I pulled from the computer (hopefully it works, but I have no way of testing it).

 

I've seen 3.5" floppy drives with a USB interface, so I figure that should be fairly safe, but I'm open to suggestions there as well.  What about 5.25" floppy drives?

 

Once I do get these old media hooked up to a modern computer, then I'll probably have more questions about how to actually access the data   I believe the computer ran Windows 95, but the owners aren't sure.

The Adaptec 2940 was the warhorse of its day (mid- to late-90s). It's a PCI card. A quick check on ebay found 400+ listings!!

 

(You probably even know someone with one in a closet .)

 

Linux and BSD still support it, and WinXP (I haven't tried Win7).

 

There were a few variations:

2940 - original

2940W - Wide (faster)

2940UW - Ultra Wide (even faster)

 

Any one will serve your need.

 

Thank you! I just ordered a 2940W from an eBay seller for under $15 shipped! Let's hope this puppy works!

Received the 2940W and installed it in an old test computer I had handy. Windows 7 recognized the card and installed a driver for it, so that seems like a good sign. The SCSI drive does spin and doesn't make any odd noises (more good signs), but it is not recognized by Window's storage manager. The drive is also not recognized in BIOS as far as I can tell.

 

I tried GetDataBack, both the NTFS and FAT incarnations. Neither recognized the SCSI drive. As I understand it, even the oldest versions of Windows ran on either FAT or NTFS, so I'm out of ideas. At this point I'm not sure if the drive itself is to blame, the SCSI cable, or the card. Any ideas? The only hardware replacements I could make would be a new cable and/or a new card, but as far as I can tell the card seems to be working.

You might try some "live" version of Linux or BSD. (I doubt that unRAID has the 294x driver). After booting the OS, do a "dmesg > KMSG" and look at file KMSG to determine the /dev/XXX name for the scsi drive; hopefully, it is there.

 

Then you can use "dd if=/dev/XXX of=/dev/null bs=1M count=250"

just to be sure it is readable. Then a "fdisk -l /dev/XXX" to identify the partitioning. If good so far, mount the partition(s) read-only and have a look-see.

 

Good luck.

 

If Windows doesn't see the drive at all, it may be the SCSI ID or the termination.

 

There should be some jumpers on the drive to set the SCSI ID.  The ID can be 0 to 7, but 7 is reserved for the SCSI card so the drive ID can be set from 0 to 6.

 

SCSI drives also require termination, and since the drive is the only and last drive in the SCSI chain, I think it needs to be terminated.  There should a jumper to enable termination.

 

 

Thanks guys!

 

You might try some "live" version of Linux or BSD. (I doubt that unRAID has the 294x driver). After booting the OS, do a "dmesg > KMSG" and look at file KMSG to determine the /dev/XXX name for the scsi drive; hopefully, it is there.

 

Then you can use "dd if=/dev/XXX of=/dev/null bs=1M count=250"

just to be sure it is readable. Then a "fdisk -l /dev/XXX" to identify the partitioning. If good so far, mount the partition(s) read-only and have a look-see.

 

Great, I'll try that next. I've got a copy of Ubuntu 11.10 handy, so I'll run with that. I'm also downloading 12.04 if you think that might be better. I'm also happy to try BSD or anything else you suggest.

 

I booted from 11.10, ran Terminal, and typed dmesg > KMSG. The command didn't return anything. I searched for KMSG as a file name but found nothing. Where do I find that file?

 

If Windows doesn't see the drive at all, it may be the SCSI ID or the termination.

 

There should be some jumpers on the drive to set the SCSI ID.  The ID can be 0 to 7, but 7 is reserved for the SCSI card so the drive ID can be set from 0 to 6.

 

SCSI drives also require termination, and since the drive is the only and last drive in the SCSI chain, I think it needs to be terminated.  There should a jumper to enable termination.

 

Thanks for the tip! I removed the drive from the drive tray and do indeed see several jumpers on the bottom circuitry. I'm not sure which to modify: A, B, C, or D

 

Note: I left these photos full size, so you can zoom way in if needed.

Original photo without annotation

 

Original photo without annotation

 

In another bit of exciting progress, I saw the SCSI drive identified as the 2940W initialized! I guess the third reseating of the connection made a difference. That's at least an indication that the cable and card are both working. It survived through two reboots and was also recognized as a boot device in the motherboard's BIOS. I tried to boot from the SCSI drive but received an error. Ever since the drive has stopped appearing the in the 2940W's initialization. Windows still did not recognize the drive even when it was showing up in BIOS, nor did GetDataBack NTFS/FAT.

 

Another thought: do the the serial and parallel ports on the motherboard affect SCSI at all? I have them disabled.

The jumpers at position D are probably the ones you want to change, however the meaning of each varies by drive model.  Was there a label on the other side of the drive listing the jumpers?  If not, then you'll need to look up the drive online to find out how to set them.

 

If there are no jumpers set now, then it's probably set to SCSI ID 0, which is ok, so the only thing to check is if termination is enabled or not.  Is there a jumper labeled TE? Usually, a jumper at that position would mean that termination is enabled, which I think you need if this is the last drive in the chain (or the only drive).

 

Did this drive come from another computer where it was working (or at one time working)? If it was the only drive, then I think you can leave all the jumpers as is, unless someone else might have been changing them.

 

your very first picture showed a 50 pin scsi terminator.. you plug that into the ribbon cable after your drive.

 

now what i dont remember is if goes in the last plug or the first one after the drive.

 

it has been a long time (at least 10 years) since i used SCSI drives loose outside of hotplug bays.

i bet that is a whopping 4GB drive you got there.. (or a 9GB)

 

I am sure I have some old scsi junk in my storage unit. but man.. you're making my head hurt trying to remember it.

I should probably do the same thing one day and toss out my old NT4.0 servers.

 

 

The jumpers at position D are probably the ones you want to change, however the meaning of each varies by drive model.  Was there a label on the other side of the drive listing the jumpers?  If not, then you'll need to look up the drive online to find out how to set them.

 

If there are no jumpers set now, then it's probably set to SCSI ID 0, which is ok, so the only thing to check is if termination is enabled or not.  Is there a jumper labeled TE? Usually, a jumper at that position would mean that termination is enabled, which I think you need if this is the last drive in the chain (or the only drive).

 

Did this drive come from another computer where it was working (or at one time working)? If it was the only drive, then I think you can leave all the jumpers as is, unless someone else might have been changing them.

 

Unfortunately the label offers no advice regarding the jumpers. The only interesting info is:

 

Maxtor

Model: LXT340SY

Serial No: 2A06101169

TLA No: 9644416 3

Made in: Singapore 1

Copyright 1998

 

A google search for the model number and the term 'jumper' came up with this:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/maxtor/LXT-340SY-340MB-3-5-HH-SCSI1-SE.html

 

There's a wealth of information regarding the jumpers at that link.

 

This drive was the computer's boot drive at one point, and as far as I know it was the only hard drive installed (at least that was true at the time when I received the computer). The SCSI cable has only two connections and I arbitrarily connected one end to the card and the other end to the drive. I can try swapping the connectors if it matters. The connectors have a notch that only allow them to be inserted one way.

 

I don't see a jumper labeled TE.

 

your very first picture showed a 50 pin scsi terminator.. you plug that into the ribbon cable after your drive.

 

now what i dont remember is if goes in the last plug or the first one after the drive.

 

Since the cable only has two connectors, I shouldn't need a SCSI terminator, correct?

 

i bet that is a whopping 4GB drive you got there.. (or a 9GB)

 

It is a 340 MB drive

That web page (on stason.org) was a lucky find.

 

It looks like your drive IS correctly terminated. Just after half way down that web-page, you see the section "Interface Termination". Reading that, and referring to your first high-res picture, you see the three terminator packs in the upper-right--those 3 blue skinny thingys (the top one is labeled U42 [as mentioned on the page]).

 

You should verify that the packs are oriented as described in 2nd paragraph of that section.

 

The puzzle is why drive isn't being seen ...

 

Thanks UhClem! I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the drive is just toast, but I'll keep playing around with it to see if I can get something to recognize it.

Is there any chance the drive was used with Mac? SCSI was somewhat uncommon for use with windows, but was widely used by Macs, perhaps the partition table is HFS, and thus why windows won't acknowledge it.