LBA disk on old machine

My laptop (Dell Inspiron 5150) has finally taken a powder. I might try to have it fixed this fall, but not today. I want to salvage the data from the hard drive (2.5" 250 GB Western Digital Scorpio PATA).

I bought one of those adapters that let me use the cables on a desktop to plug in a drive from a laptop. When I connect it to the cable for the second hard drive in my old system, the system doesn't recognize EITHER hard drive. I've tried jumpering for master/slave and for CSEL, and neither works. I DO have the requisite cables for CSEL to work; it just seems like this drive kills the entire IDE controller.

So, I thought I'd try the SECONDARY IDE channel. That way, I could leave the existing hard drives alone, give up the optical drives, and connect the laptop drive where the opticals had been. I disconnected the cables from both my DVD and CD drives (I have two hard drives on the primary IDE channel -- a 75 and a 120 GB drive, and a DVD burner and a CD burner on the secondary IDE).

When I connected the laptop drive, jumpered as either the master or as CSEL, to EITHER connector on the secondary channel, even with both physical drives disconnected, the BIOS said it saw NO drives.

I tried ignoring the problem and booting to XP anyway, but XP doesn't see it, either.

Is it because of the capacity of the laptop drive? Could this be an LBA thing?

I had to partition this drive as 120/130 to get Win XP to boot in the laptop (the BIOS won't boot from a partition larger than 128 GB), but I figured I surely could connect it as a secondary drive and at least copy the data OFF of it!(?)!

I DO have a newer machine available to try it on, but it has square 4- and 6-pin power supply connectors, rather than the old 4-pins-in-a-row molex connectors that the adapter I have requires.

Any suggestions?

 

I have not used an adapter like you used. I have used one of these with good results. Uses the USB port.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-m...01I1G/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0

 

I was thinking of another option. Install the drive by itself as master to the primary channel. Nothing on the secondary. If the BIOS sees the drive, boot a small linux distro like Puppy. Then transfer the data you need to a flash drive. You can easily make it bootable with either unetbootin or linux live usb. For both the flash drive has to be formatted to fat32.

 

This was the kind of adapter I was talking about -- it's basically a plug converter: http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=46718

I don't think I've tried it as the LONE drive on the primary IDE controller. I did try it as the lone drive on the SECONDARY controller, at which point the BIOS said there was NO drive on the secondary.

I hadn't tried it as the lone drive on primary because I thought I'd need it to boot Windows, but that's a GREAT idea. I can get it to boot Knoppix from a CD/DVD, so I can always shuttle the data off on USB drives. I'll give it a shot and report back.

Thanks,

Larry Thomas

 

I hope it works for you. I don't know why I started with the bootable flash drive? :-o This morning I thought to myself, WTH. Why not just a bootable CD. Must of been thinking about that other thread.

 

For now, it looks like this project is dead.

I disconnected both drives from the primary IDE channel, and connected the laptop drive, using the plug converter, as the primary master, with no jumpers on the drive (which defaults it to the master). when I powered-on, the BIOS didn't recognize the drive it said "not installed" for BOTH the master and the slave).

I swapped out the 250 GB laptop drive, and swapped in an old 40 GB laptop drive I had laying around, and the BIOS recognized it just fine.

So, either the 250 GB laptop drive is categorically bad (which I don't believe; it was working before the laptop crapped out, and it didn't show any signs of the drive being the problem; the laptop won't even POST), or the 250 GB drive is somehow not compatible with the old machine I was trying to plug it into (likely; the old machine is circa 2000, and probably doesn't support LBA drives.

So, I'm hoping it's the "over 128 GB" LBA problem.

At any rate, I'm giving up on this one for now. Maybe I'll pop for the $20 PATA-to-USB converter you mentioned, or see if a friend has one. That's probably the cleanest, least-effort solution.

Thanks anyway for the help. If I ever get this one resolved, I'll try to remember to post back here.

Larry

 

You need XP SP3 for LBA, maybe SP2 but I can't remember. Circa 2000 would be W2K or Win 98.

 

I think it's a BIOS/controller limitation. I can't even get the BIOS to recognize the drive. Whenever this drive is connected to a cable, either alone or with another drive on the IDE channel, it says "not installed" for BOTH drives on the channel. Something about the drive is killing the whole IDE channel (I've tried it on both primary and secondary, alone or with another drive, using CSEL, or jumpered to the actual connection). There seems to be NO combination that works. I'll probably just end up getting an external USB adapter, and go that route. Then again, if I get my laptop working again, I'll just slide it in and let 'er rip -- but that's a project for another time...

 

What bios version are you using. From what I have read, anything that is A22 or later will support LBA.

 

The latest BIOS for this system is A11, dated 6/25/2002 (that's pretty darned old!). That IS the version I'm running (http://support.dell.com/support/dow...d=-1&impid=-1&typeid=-1&formatid=-1&dateid=-1)

I went back through the old versions on the Dell website, to see what had been added, and none of them mentioned LBA support.

Time for Google. I searched for "Dell Dimension 4100 LBA" and found this post in a Dell support forum that siad that NO 4100 BIOS supported LBA, but that there IS a software workaround: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/17408274.aspx. I'm not sure how the system can ever boot if the BIOS sees no drives installed (connecting the 250 GB drive, in any configuration, makes the BIOS report "not installed" for BOTH drives on the IDE channel). To further muddy the waters, the "IAA" link the previous site mentions is apparently broken.

My laptop was from 2003 - the infamous Inspiron 5150. It "didn't support" LBA drives, either, which I learned after replacing my 60 GB drive with a 250 (http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=199302). I got around the problem by partitioning it so that Windows wasn't trying to boot from a partition over 128 GB. That solved it on the laptop. I had hoped that simply dropping it in the desktop would work the same way (since it's still formatted that way), but the desktop says "not installed" for the drives. If I try to leave the C: drive connected to the bus and add the laptop drive as D:, the BIOS can't see C:, so it can't boot Windows. I suppose the only other thing to try is to connect it up anyway and boot Knoppix and see if IT can see it -- maybe linux enumerates the hardware itself by probing (with more modern code), rather than asking the BIOS

I suspect that the ATA controller in the desktop ("Intel 82801BA Ultra ATA Storage Controller 244B") just isn't up to the task. This system was purchased in 2000, so it was probably designed in 1999. We're looking at some OLD components here! When I bought the 4100, I really, really splurged and bought a 75-GB drive, when the standard was 20. Nobody was really thinking about what lied beyond 128 at that time.

I could also get another ATA adapter and plug it in that way, but that's a dead-end in terms of hardware (but it probably WOULD be cheap!). I don't recall what's available inside the box in terms of free PCI slots.

I've spent a little longer on this than I probably should have already, but I hate to run into a brick wall and not come up with the definitive answer. Even if the bottom line is that it can't be made to work, I'd like to know WHY.

Arrrrggggghhhh...

 

O.K., I give up. I couldn't get Knoppix 6.4.4 cd or DVD to boot, but the 5.3.1 disc DID boot.

I shut down, connected the 250 GB laptop drive where the first hard disk was, and disconnected the second hard drive (a 120 GB drive). There's one disc on the primary IDE channel, and it's the laptop's hard drive. Then I re-started Knoppix 5.3.1.

I opened a root console, and tried both fdisk and parted with both /dev/hda and /dev/sda. All 4 combinations said "no such device".

I went into device manager under Knoppix, and it shows the SECONDARY IDE channel "82801BA IDE U100 Controller", and it shows my DVD/RW drive as the master, and the CD/RW drive as the slave. It doesn't show the other controller at all. Whenever that drive is connected to either IDE channel, it (the channel controller) gets hosed.

I shut down, unplugged the laptop drive, re-connected (only) the 75 GB drive (Primary Master), re-started Knoppix, and fdisk /dev/hda brought up the partition table for the drive just fine, and device manager shows only one IDE controller, but it DOES show the hard drive as master, and the two optical drives as master and slave (it apparently doesn't differentiate between the primary and secondary channels).

Something about thie 250 GB laptop drive drive simply lobotomizes the IDE controller. I give up.