Backing up ST506 disks

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Mon Aug 4 19:50:17 2003

At 11:52 AM 8/4/03 -0700, you wrote:

>
>
>> For my old SCSI systems I tend to hold a raw block-by-block backup image
of the
>> drive by putting the hard disk in a PC with Linux and dragging data off
that
>> way. If the drive fails and I can't get an identical replacement, a
slightly
>> larger drive still works with a little bit of wastage. Due to the
relationship
>> between the controller and drive using ST506 I gather things are probably a
>> little more complex though...
>
>Not much. Put an ST506 controller into a PC. ST506/412 was the defacto
>standard on PCs until IDE. although most PC people erroneously refer to
>the cabling and interface as "MFM". The controllers used by IBM in the XT
>were made by Xebec.
>Once you have a controller and drive in your PC, you can write the code to
>read and write sectors to be able to copy a drive.

  I don't think youd even have to write any code. You could boot it from a
DOS disk and use Debug to read the raw disk sectors and write them to the
new drive.

    Joe


>If you go a step further, and parse the DIRectory, then you could
>selectively read and write sectors to be able to transfer files.
Received on Mon Aug 04 2003 - 19:50:17 BST