Testing an old Rodime Hard Drive

[danda]

Hello,

In school two days ago, I noticed something unexpected on my computing teacher's desk. Closer inspection revealed it to be an old Rodime hard drive. I spoke to my teacher and he agreed I could borrow the drive to see if it worked, and if there was any data on it. I took it back home, but before I attached it to a Mac (I'm fairly certain it is from a Mac - the school used Macs almost exclusively throughout the 1990s) I thought I would check a few things.

1.) There are two wires, a red and a black, on the back of the HDD that appear to have been cut. I cannot find any connection terminals where they would connect to, and I am not sure what they are for. Does anyone know what the wires are used for and if it is safe to power on the hard drive with them cut / disconnected?

2.) Is there any procedures that should be carried out before the drive is powered on? Should I warm it to a certain temperature, power it on but leave the data cable disconnected, etc...

3.) How possible is it that the drive could cause damage to the Mac I am using to test the drive, and if there is a possibility is there any way that it could be reduced (e.g: by powering the drive off a completely separate PSU). I only spoke to the computing teacher briefly about the drive, but he did mention that it had been dropped several times! I am interested to see what is on the drive, but I don't want to break any of my Macs in the process.

I have attached photos of the drive, the underside of the drive, and a close-up of the two wires that have been cut / disconnected, if this helps.

Andrew

 

[Paralel]

Wasn't the Rodime specific to the original HD20, and not compatible with standard SCSI?

 

[danda]

I don't think it is from a HD20, as I've looked it up online and from what I can see it is a 210MB hard drive, so would not be from a HD20.

 

[raoulduke]

http://www.verycomputer.com/39_c0341080bde5e694_1.htm

 

[johnklos]

You can ignore, or better yet, remove those wires.

 

[CelGen]

1.) There are two wires, a red and a black, on the back of the HDD that appear to have been cut. I cannot find any connection terminals where they would connect to, and I am not sure what they are for. Does anyone know what the wires are used for and if it is safe to power on the hard drive with them cut / disconnected?

$20 it's the remains of wiring for an external activity LED. You can remove it if you like as without the LED it serves no purpose.

2.) Is there any procedures that should be carried out before the drive is powered on? Should I warm it to a certain temperature, power it on but leave the data cable disconnected, etc...

Place it exactly 12" over a trash can, release your grip and let it gracefully fall into the garbage. Rodime drives are awful in terms of reliability.

3.) How possible is it that the drive could cause damage to the Mac I am using to test the drive, and if there is a possibility is there any way that it could be reduced (e.g: by powering the drive off a completely separate PSU). I only spoke to the computing teacher briefly about the drive, but he did mention that it had been dropped several times! I am interested to see what is on the drive, but I don't want to break any of my Macs in the process.

Only in rare and unlikely circumstances can a drive kill a mac. Just plug in the  Molex power connection and if it spins up and doesn't sound like it crashed it's fine. Weather not it has a mac filesystem however.....

Wasn't the Rodime specific to the original HD20, and not compatible with standard SCSI?

Rodime is a cheap and really nasty hard disk maufacturer who has long since gone out of business. I'm had the inconvenience to find their drives in Apricot machines. They were not strictly making drives for Apple but they were also not making drives with just the non-standard interfaces the HD20 and Apricots used.

 

[olePigeon]

I was a big fan of Micropolis, mostly because the name sounds awesome.  During their time they were, according to Wikipedia, very innovative.  However, I didn't know a single person who didn't have a Micropolis drive go bad on them.

Rodime has a nifty logo and name.  Had I known about them, seems like the perfect product for me to have wasted my money on.

 

[danda]

OK, I've connected the hard drive to a PSU and powered up. Unfortunately nothing happens (can't hear the drive spin up at all). However, the fan speed of the PSU does decrease, which it also happens if a normal IDE hard drive is connected.

Do you think it's safe to test in a Mac?

 

[Paralel]

Go for it, nothing should happen to the Mac if the drive is dead/no good.

As far it not spinning up, Rap it on the side as hard as you can. It could easily be stiction. (HD Head gets stuck in the old drive lube when its been sitting on there for too long, a nice hard hit on the site of the drive usually fixes it. Just don't use anything more than your hand, otherwise you might injure the drive)