I am imaging this drive just in case it dies (from a 2000 gateway laptop I’m setting up for old games). it’s a 2.5" IDE Toshiba drive. It works just fine, has Win 2k on it. I have tried 2 different IDE to usb adapters, and both have powered up the drive, but neither have shown anything in fdisk (on linux). No weird noises or bad clicking from the drive.

I do notice that the drive does not have any jumpers on it - so I didn’t think I’d need to put a jumper on master (if it has that, i need to look closer) but I figured it would already have the jumper on master if it was the only drive in the laptop right?

      • Shadow@lemmy.ca
        5·
        2 days ago

        Boot a clonezilla or Linux CD, don’t use your windows install. It should have proper USB support as long as you actually have USB ports.

      • Chronographs@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Could also try just a flash drive, I imagine whatever drive in there is pretty small. What ide adapters do you have anyways

      • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyzEnglish
        21·
        2 days ago

        OK something that old surely has a serial port on it? If so, look in to “sneakernet” (it’s a technique, not a product) to connect to another computer. I’ve even done networking over a serial port with linux, but there also used to be software just for copying files. That wouldn’t give you a drive image but it would at least back up the software.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          That hard drive is probably multiple gigabytes, it would take days to weeks to transfer that over a serial port. If the computer has a PC card slot, I would look for an ethernet adapter that would work with it.

          • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyzEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            Heh I managed to jump directly from best-case to worst-case, but hey, that still leaves everything in between as options. :-)

            Yeah, speed is everything and there are pcmcia ethernet cards for $10 or less on ebay if OP has that option.

            • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.worksOP
              1·
              1 day ago

              It does have pcm slot and it does work. Ethernet may be my best option.

              The other issue is the cd drive spins up but does not seem to be able to be reading either.