My 40/80/160 Mb SCSI Hard disk are all dying.

[jroger]

Hello,

I have about 15 old Macs in my collection.

Classic I/II, LC I/II/III/475, Quadra 650/700, Mac II an so on...

But I am in trouble with my war treasure: Almost all hard disks are out of order.

They all have the same symptom: when I turn the computer on, they start spinning for a few seconds then stop. The screen shows a "?" (no system found) Mac.

Anyone has a solution to fix it ?

 

[porter]

Anyone has a solution to fix it ?

Entropy is times arrow.

Apart from timetravel and replacing the drives?

If the machines can deal with more modern SCSI then replace them, possibly using 68pin to 50pin adapters or similar. More problematic are the Mac Pluses which require older SCSI devices which (my understanding is) default the size of the sectors to 512 bytes.

 

[equill]

I haven't one formatted drive in more than 100: SCSI, ATA, 40-pin, 50-pin, 68-pin or 80-pin that is not deliberately formatted with 512-Byte sectors, as opposed to those sinister upstart formatting protocols that use 514-Byte. Was this really your focus, or consistent with the ages of the Plus to SE crowd, was it interleave factor that was really on the tip of your tongue? Since, as you note, the drives that were contemporary with those Macs are dying out (as perhaps also are those Mac-owners who used them), modern 50-pin drives adapt quite nicely to the challenge. Perhaps an occasional Plus with an elderly Quantum may need Silverlining 5.8.3 to impose a 3:1 interleave, but generally it is no longer needed even if the SCSI ports on the Macs have not grown faster with age.

de

e-less 'those' repaired.

 

[Charlieman]

Mine aren't dying. My Macs are kept in an unheated room in my house where the temperature is indirectly maintained at about 14 Celsius. Whenever I need to experiment, I bring the Mac into my living room (~20 Celsius) and allow it to acclimatise. If you store your Macs in a cold environment, allow a couple of days for everything to warm up.

 

[MacMan]

A few of my older SCSI drives have done this, started spinning up and then stopped. This unfortunately signals that the drive is dead and there's no real way to fix it.

I would suggest going along the lines of looking for 50 to 68 pin adaptors and getting hold of some more modern 68 pin SCSI drives. This has worked well for me so far and the newer SCSI drives tend to be a lot faster and more reliable.

 

[LCGuy]

Out of curiousity, what make/model are the drives? I find that Quantum ProDrive ELS's tend to do what you're describing quite a bit...every one that I've owned has died, and they were made in all the capacities that you posted too.

 

[jroger]

You're right.

All dying hard drives are Quantum ProDrive ELS.

Conner and IBM are still working.

Conclusion: Don't buy Quantum drives, they are not reliables )

 

[LCGuy]

Actually, the LPS series Quantum drives are a very reliable drive...out of all the ones I've owned I've only ever had one die, I've got LPS's dated 1990 - 1992 that still work like new. The ELS's on the other hand, ick!

 

[joshc]

Personally, if I had a collection of old Macs like that, and if money was no object, I would get a bunch of SCSI-IDE adapter and then IDE-CF adapters and have myself a little CompactFlash party.

 

[jroger]

Well, it sounds like a good idea, but will the machines boot on such a non Apple device ?

In fact a few adapters would be enough as I don't need to start a bunch of Mac at once.

 

[jroger]

wackymacs, you're a smart guy

http://www.mars-tech.com/ars-2000fu.htm

(it works, see http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8442&highlight=ars2000fu)

then

http://www.amazon.fr/Adaptateur-Convertisseur-card-vers-IDE/dp/B001IXAKI0/ref=pd_sbs_ce_4

 

[System7]

You would think small size HDs would be cheap to make today no?

 

[jroger]

I don't think so.

Setting up an assembly line must be very expensive, and there is probably no market for such small capacities HD except for us, poor fool guys [)] ]'>

Moreover, spinning hard disks will probably disappear quickly.

Anyway the idea of Flash HD in a Mac LC makes me smiling. Such bleeding edge tech in such an old computer [] ]'>

 

[Yoshihide]

All the SCSI hard drives in my Macs have died a while ago or have made somewhat strange noises that may be signaling death.

I've replaced all of them with CF cards and 2.5" ATA drives a few years ago, using special adaptors designed for SCSI PowerBooks. Fast and quite reliable. Still running 24/7 as a server. Are there any other cheaper ways of using CF cards instead of a special (and expensive) CF-SCSI adaptor?

BTW: in reply to jroger, I actually do have a SSD (CompactFlash) in an LC II

 

[Scott Baret]

I just had an EPS die last week (an 80MB in a CC). Only two of my ELS drives still work.

Of the other brands, here is my failure rate:

MiniScribe: Both of mine are still working!

ProDrive LPS: Of the nearly two dozen I have I have yet to have a failure.

Older pre-ProDrive Quantums: The 40MBs have been fine. I've had two 80MBs fail though.

Conner: Only one of the 12 or so I have has died.

IBM: All of these still work!

Quantum Fireball: Again, all of mine work!

Toshiba: Both of my Toshiba drives have died.

Hitachi: The only one I have is still under warranty and so far so good.

Maxtor: The old 90s model died but the newer ones seem OK.

Rodime: Somehow it's still working. I think it may be the only Rodime in the local area to spin up. (If you knew anything about these drives in the 80s/early 90s you know why I say this).

 

[Dog Cow]

All dying hard drives are Quantum ProDrive ELS.

Yes, same here. I have an 80MB Quantum drive with date of 1992 and it does not like to spin up these days. I have a dirty trick I use, though. I thrust it clockwise, basically, in the direction that the platters would spin. Doing this enough, and giving it power over and over again will get it started. But this destroys the drive. It's like doing drugs, each time you need to do more and more to get it going. When I first started, I could get the drive spinning in just 1 minute or so, now it takes as long as 5-10 minutes of this activity.

But it's not completely dead yet!

You would think small size HDs would be cheap to make today no?

Dirt cheap, if you can find them. Prices are currently around $1 per gigabyte.

If you store your Macs in a cold environment, allow a couple of days for everything to warm up.

This is certainly a good tip, which applies to most all magnetic media as well. The better tip is to not store them in a cold environment. For this reason, I store all of my Apple equipment in my own bedroom where I sleep at night, for I know it shall be always warm there!

(this tip is not so convenient if you have a small room!)

 

[joshc]

wackymacs, you're a smart guy
http://www.mars-tech.com/ars-2000fu.htm

(it works, see http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8442&highlight=ars2000fu)

then

http://www.amazon.fr/Adaptateur-Convertisseur-card-vers-IDE/dp/B001IXAKI0/ref=pd_sbs_ce_4

Thanks jroger - those are useful links. Some people may need a different adapter though, as that is Ultra-SCSI. Personally I think this route makes a lot more sense than trying to find another SCSI drive. That is, of course, assuming that you have the money to spend.

Three good reasons for shelling out the $119 for a Acard SCSI-IDE adapter:

- If you find a used SCSI drive, it's probably going to be noisy. And you don't know how much longer it's going to last anyway.

- Those old SCSI drives are slow. Using a CompactFlash will not only be silent, it will be faster.

- Your computer will weigh less and it will run cooler. Hard drives generate a lot of heat if your machine is running for more than a few hours.

Brand new SCSI drives are made for commercial purposes, the government, and so on. They are not available in small sizes. It's not because they can't make them cheap - it's because they cannot make a profit from manufacturing them. There is just not enough demand for small drives like this anymore.

If you don't like the idea of a CF, then you can always use an IDE hard drive with it.

 

[Charlieman]

MiniScribe: Both of mine are still working!

I know -- I can hear them from over here ;-)

Sony supplied a batch of disks that were used in the SE, external enclosures and possibly some others. These were subject to a recall because the reliability was so bad, and Sony stopped making hard disks. There's only one or two sizes and all should be considered at "high risk".

 

[jroger]

Cheaper:

http://cgi.ebay.fr/ACARD-Convertitore-da-HDD-IDE-a-HDD-SCSI_W0QQitemZ270333258103QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCavi_Prolunghe_Convertitori?hash=item270333258103&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1526|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318