A box of old 50 pin SCSI hard drives that I had in deep storage needs to be examined, or possibly disposed of. I counted 9 of them and do not know if they are functional or not. And, if they are functional, I am curious to know what was stored on them. These have been stored for twenty or more years. I am fortunate to once again have a fine SE/30 here to be used to assist in the process. But, I am needing some advice on the best way to connect them to the SE/30 for their examination.
Here is what I have tried unsuccessfully: I have a power supply 4 pin cable cable that can be connected in tandem with the SCSI drive in the SE/30. And, I have a 50 pin ribbon cable that can also be connected in tandem with the hard drive. When connected, I have the internal hard drive of the SE/30 as well as the old hard drive, now lying on the bench next to the SE/30 connected. After the cables were all connected, the SE/30 was switched on, but of course the question mark on a floppy drive Icon flashed on the monitor. I’m assuming it doesn’t know which drive to boot from, whether the internal or the old drive now externally located. Or, likely there’s more to it than that.
My next move is to simply disconnect the internal hard drive from the cable and leave the external connected, then switch the SE/30 on and see if it boots. At one time, it no doubt was the boot drive for an old Mac I had here, and a good chance exists there is an OS on it to boot from. This seems to be the logical step, as there would be only one HD available. Only issue with this solution would be that I cannot easily transfer files from the old hard drive (if it turns out to be functional) to the internal HD of the SE/30. I can envision an option would be to use floppies as an intermediate step in making any such file transfers.
If there is a preferred method of examining old 50 pin SCSI drives easily, please feel free to offer some suggestions, or otherwise some pointers on what I am planning to do next. Thanks much in advance!
Here is what I have tried unsuccessfully: I have a power supply 4 pin cable cable that can be connected in tandem with the SCSI drive in the SE/30. And, I have a 50 pin ribbon cable that can also be connected in tandem with the hard drive. When connected, I have the internal hard drive of the SE/30 as well as the old hard drive, now lying on the bench next to the SE/30 connected. After the cables were all connected, the SE/30 was switched on, but of course the question mark on a floppy drive Icon flashed on the monitor. I’m assuming it doesn’t know which drive to boot from, whether the internal or the old drive now externally located. Or, likely there’s more to it than that.
My next move is to simply disconnect the internal hard drive from the cable and leave the external connected, then switch the SE/30 on and see if it boots. At one time, it no doubt was the boot drive for an old Mac I had here, and a good chance exists there is an OS on it to boot from. This seems to be the logical step, as there would be only one HD available. Only issue with this solution would be that I cannot easily transfer files from the old hard drive (if it turns out to be functional) to the internal HD of the SE/30. I can envision an option would be to use floppies as an intermediate step in making any such file transfers.
If there is a preferred method of examining old 50 pin SCSI drives easily, please feel free to offer some suggestions, or otherwise some pointers on what I am planning to do next. Thanks much in advance!