How to save an old HD 20SC?

[BEU]

Hello this is my first post in this excellent forum. I have started to repair some old Macintosh thats not working. I have had enormous help with information from this forum regarding how to recap a Mac SE/30 in the best way. I managed to repair a Mac SE/30 with simasimac and vertical black lines ( Mac in Jail) with help from previous threads. Special thanks to zuiko21.

My problem for the moment is to repair and old external harddrive (Apple HD 20SC). It was working recently with a SE/30 but now its not possible to either read or write.

The harddrive is a Miniscribe M8425 SA from 1988. The harddrive is spinning when I start it and the motor on the side is working. If I connect and start the HD 20SC before I start the computer, the Mac hangs when its loading Finder. If I start the Mac first and then the HD 20SC, the computer ( Mac 5500/275 Mac OS 9.1) can see that the SCSI drive is connected when I use SCSI Probe 5.2.1. If I try to mount it there is a failure message, see photo.

I have used MT Everything and I think that is Ok?

Is it possible to save this old Miniscribe or do I have to replace it? Can I format the drive and how?

the SCSI cable is OK and its working with another HD.

Many thanks in advance

 

[CelGen]

The miniscribes have a horrible reputation of dying so it isn't possible to repair it once it reaches the point whee it starts crashing the finder.

 

[BEU]

Thanks CelGen for information about the Miniscribe.

Maybe its time to replace the harddisk with a newer one.

/BEU

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Welcome aboard, BEU!

It sounds like it's definitely time to look into a new drive. Are SCSI drives available over there? If not and you've got a good drive in another Mac that has a fan for cooling, I'd put that into the HD 20SC and look into SCA drives to replace that one.

Using Modern Hard Drives on Old Macs?

 

[BEU]

Thanks for advice and the link. I got an old 18 GB SCA drive and a SCA adapter. I formatted to 9 partition of 2 GB each using Lido 756.

Its working perfect. Even the SCSI selector and the LED is working with this disk.