this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Help imaging a IDE drive (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 week ago by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
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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?

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[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Based on this single 2.5” drives don’t use a jumper.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oo yep that makes sense then.

Darn. I really hoped this would work. Im not sure how else to backup this drive, I mainly want to do that to keep the drivers intact

[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe try and boot something like clonezilla to the laptop you took it from instead of messing with shoddy adapters?

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How would I clone it on the laptop

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Plug the destination drive into the new USB adapter you got?

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The laptop is too old to read a usb device like that without drivers

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.zip 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Maybe clonezilla would recognize it. Windows isn't recognizing usb devices at the moment.

I put the adapter in the main post.

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.de 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.xyz 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.works 1 points 1 week 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.