[SOLVED] Getting data off old old OLD hard drives

[GorillaMonsoon]

I have a couple of drives I was using between 10 and 20 years ago back in the 98/XP days and I had a sudden desire to see whats on these things ive been carting around forever. An IDE and a g1 SATA. I bought a cable to be able to connect them via USB here, and I'm using my computers PSU molex and SATA power for power. I can't seem to get windows to see any sign of the drives. I can hear the drives spin up upon getting power. Kinda stuck and hoping for some help. I tried different USB ports, I even tried plugging the SATA cable directly into my MOBO. Tried it powered off, and on.

 

[thx1138v2]

I'm guessing you'll need drivers for the IDE drive. I'm not sure about the SATA but it seems it should work depending on how you have UEFI set up. Maybe try them one at a time, SATA first.

 

[TerryLaze]

You do not need drivers for ide.
That cable is just crap, I know I have one as well.
You can try wiggling until it maybe sees it.
If you connect the sata one to a sata port on your mobo and go into bios does it show up there? You might have that port disabled by default and may have to enable it in bios.
You could get a PCI card that gives you ide ports or a ide to sata adapter that allows you to connect it directly to the sata ports, but be careful because those are one way unless explicitly stated, so ide to sata will work sata to ide is the opposite.

But finally on 20 year old drives, if they weren't stored well, it is pretty possible that they just don't work anymore.

 

[GorillaMonsoon]

You do not need drivers for ide.
That cable is just crap, I know I have one as well.
You can try wiggling until it maybe sees it.
If you connect the sata one to a sata port on your mobo and go into bios does it show up there? You might have that port disabled by default and may have to enable it in bios.
You could get a PCI card that gives you ide ports or a ide to sata adapter that allows you to connect it directly to the sata ports, but be careful because those are one way unless explicitly stated, so ide to sata will work sata to ide is the opposite.

But finally on 20 year old drives, if they weren't stored well, it is pretty possible that they just don't work anymore.

Yeah looks like I should have read the reviews on that cable first. I thought it would be as simple as plugging in a flash drive. I did poke around in the bios at one time just to make sure no obvious things were disabled, but couldn't see anything obvious anyway. I'll mess around with the bios and that cable some more I guess