CF Card as IDE HDD alternative?

[dotmatrix]

I have an old 286 era IBM which I would like to image the HDD for backup. Got me thinking once the spinner goes bad what is the modern alternative? I have seen IDE to CF adapters on the web. Can one of these be used, along with some emulation software, as an alternative HDD to the spinners?

 

[creepingnet]

This is actually a pretty standard thing to do these days, I'm probably one of the last holdouts left still using "spinning rust" for my data storage on my legacy systems. I think most people on XT/AT systems tend to use the XT-IDE cards though with the CF attachment. I've been toying with going this route with my laptops eventually but those are kind of O.T. for this subforum since they're all 486+.

 

[Plasma]

This is actually a pretty standard thing to do these days, I'm probably one of the last holdouts left still using "spinning rust" for my data storage on my legacy systems. I think most people on XT/AT systems tend to use the XT-IDE cards though with the CF attachment. I've been toying with going this route with my laptops eventually but those are kind of O.T. for this subforum since they're all 486+.

You aren't alone. Hard drive or no drive

I have an old 286 era IBM which I would like to image the HDD for backup. Got me thinking once the spinner goes bad what is the modern alternative? I have seen IDE to CF adapters on the web. Can one of these be used, along with some emulation software, as an alternative HDD to the spinners?

Yes CF cards can be used with those adapters. No software required. Sometimes there are compatibility problems with either the card or how it is formatted. So you may need to screw around a bit.

 

[twolazy]

Even if you dont want cf cards now, grab them. They have skyrocketed in price past few years. And price of drives is even crazier. Sooner or later the spinning rust is going to die or be niche, and cf cards or small sd/microsd will be insane as well. Grab the small stuff (16mb-2gb) while you can.

Have a few hundred 512mb usb thumbsticks, speaking of, for the isa usb card or perfect size for goteks. Hit me up if you want a few. Size is right for older dos.

 

[dotmatrix]

Fantastic thanks guys. This is an incredible alternative!

Would this item fit the requirements

Hot sale!Compact Flash CF to 3.5 Female 40 Pin IDE Bootable Adapter Conve-w- | eBay

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or this

XT-IDE Deluxe - Bootable ISA CF+IDE Interface Card

Note: This product can have some shipping delays if it is under heavy demand or an inrush of orders occurs. The XT-IDE Deluxe is primarily for adding a reliable, modern hard disk solution to an 8088 PC, such as an IBM 5150 or 5160. It also works in 286 and up, but a solution involving the...

monotech.fwscart.com

Is there a max capacity to consider?

I hope to boot to Acronis CD to clone the drive. Would that work?

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Even if you dont want cf cards now, grab them. They have skyrocketed in price past few years.

Or forget about CF cards and use one of these instead:

In my jaded experience CF cards are junk. Okay, maybe that's going a bit far, but I have had way more compatibility issues with them than I have with these adapters, especially with XTIDE cards. (CF cards *usually* work okay on real 16 bit IDE ports. Usually.)

and cf cards or small sd/microsd will be insane as well. Grab the small stuff (16mb-2gb) while you can

I use these SD adapters with "high-endurance" 64GB SD cards in my XTIDE's (where you can only really use about 8GB because of DOS' limitations) because, well, the card's $10 and the adapter's $12. If the manufacturer's rating for those high-endurance SD cards are even close to accurate I could set my Tandy 1000 writing the card in an endless loop and not worry about wearing it out until, well, probably substantially after I'm going to be worn out.

 

[dotmatrix]

Niiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?

 

[Caluser2000]

You aren't alone. Hard drive or no drive

BigFoots for the win

 

[sorphin]

BigFoots for the win

I have one I grabbed specifically for the amusement value.

 

[creepingnet]

I have one I grabbed specifically for the amusement value.

In my younger years I wanted some of those drives just because they share the name with the Monster Truck.

 

[DDS]

Niiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?

No bent pins yet. But I have had one back itself out of the connector shell while inserting a card.

 

[T-R-A]

Niiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?

Memory and HDD space are separate things. You're wanting to know about HDD space. As mentioned, MS-DOS limits maximum addressable HDD space to 8.4GB per drive and 2.1GB per partition. (4 partitions of 2.1GB each, or more partitions with reduced space) You'd lose anything beyond the 8.4GB limit. Read more here: https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

 

[Caluser2000]

In my younger years I wanted some of those drives just because they share the name with the Monster Truck.

I've got two systems with then installed. The Redstone XT-Turbo with XT-IDE hdd card has a 2.1 gig drive and my 1989 386DX33 system with 4gig hdd and EZDriveDDO software. I've had no issues whatsoever with them and have four spare. Performance is perfectly fine for these class of systems.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Niiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?

As T-R-A notes, the max I can realistically use is 8GB under normal DOS, but that's, well, more than enough. My "daily driver" retro machine is a heavily modified Tandy 1000HX, and the SD card currently in it is set up to be able to dual-boot between 1.8GB PC-DOS 7 and 32MB Tandy DOS 3.3 primary partitions, and there's a 32MB "D" drive and 2GB "E" drive. (The latter only available in DOS 7, of course.) Haven't done anything with the remaining 4GB I could partition up because I'm only using about 80MB across the whole mess right now.

(My 1000EX has a triple-boot disk in it with PC-DOS 7, Tandy DOS 3.3, and DR-DOS 6.something.)

 

[Jove]

The only warning I will give here needs some details about the 286-era IBM. If that is a model 25 or 30 286, they do not use a standard IDE interface.

 

[Twospruces]

Or forget about CF cards and use one of these instead:

In my jaded experience CF cards are junk. Okay, maybe that's going a bit far, but I have had way more compatibility issues with them than I have with these adapters, especially with XTIDE cards. (CF cards *usually* work okay on real 16 bit IDE ports. Usually.)



I use these SD adapters with "high-endurance" 64GB SD cards in my XTIDE's (where you can only really use about 8GB because of DOS' limitations) because, well, the card's $10 and the adapter's $12. If the manufacturer's rating for those high-endurance SD cards are even close to accurate I could set my Tandy 1000 writing the card in an endless loop and not worry about wearing it out until, well, probably substantially after I'm going to be worn out.

What about XUB? How do you get disk firmware loaded?

 

[mbbrutman]

Or forget about CF cards and use one of these instead:

In my jaded experience CF cards are junk. Okay, maybe that's going a bit far, but I have had way more compatibility issues with them than I have with these adapters, especially with XTIDE cards. (CF cards *usually* work okay on real 16 bit IDE ports. Usually.)



I use these SD adapters with "high-endurance" 64GB SD cards in my XTIDE's (where you can only really use about 8GB because of DOS' limitations) because, well, the card's $10 and the adapter's $12. If the manufacturer's rating for those high-endurance SD cards are even close to accurate I could set my Tandy 1000 writing the card in an endless loop and not worry about wearing it out until, well, probably substantially after I'm going to be worn out.

I had two of these, purchased from Amazon recently. I could not get them to work reliably, either on a jrIDE or a modern Athlon system. The Athlon system running Linux would show the card and if I wrote the boot sector it would be visible/usable, but it did not survive reboots. A USB reader confirmed the data was on the card at block 0, but this particular device could not reliably read the card. (I tried with two systems, two different SD cards, and two different SD to IDE adapters.)

Have you noticed any flakiness?

 

[Eudimorphodon]

What about XUB? How do you get disk firmware loaded?

I'm a little confused, what about the XUB? I use these PATA->SD adapters with (homemade, in my case) XT-IDE controllers that have the normal flash/eproms for the firmware.

I had two of these, purchased from Amazon recently. I could not get them to work reliably, either on a jrIDE or a modern Athlon system. The Athlon system running Linux would show the card and if I wrote the boot sector it would be visible/usable, but it did not survive reboots. A USB reader confirmed the data was on the card at block 0, but this particular device could not reliably read the card. (I tried with two systems, two different SD cards, and two different SD to IDE adapters.)

Have you noticed any flakiness?

The ones I've been using have been absolutely rock-solid. When it comes to "real IDE" I use one like the one pictured in a Via C3 system, and while I can't say I've used it a *lot* I did spend a few weeks playing with it and never noticed a problem. On the XT-IDE side I actually have been using laptop-format 44 pin ones, but they use exactly the same bridge chip. (Why do I use the 44 pin ones? To save space on the the rough equivalent to a jr-IDE I designed for my proprietary Tandy 1000EX/HX machines.)

It does seem like based on word of mouth people do have bad experiences with them sometimes, but personally I've found them way less trouble than CF cards. Compatibility issues are RIFE with those things, especially when you're using the 8-bit mode that supposedly all CF cards support but less than half the ones I tested (about 20!) actually did. The chipset used on these things was actually designed for putting in CF-SD bridges, so it supports all the weird CF-specific modes in addition to IDE.

(In short, at least in my testing they're not only better than CF for IDE, they're better than CF for CF.)

Since they are so cheap and generically labeled I do wonder if sometimes people just get stuck with units from bad production runs. I can't imagine the QA is fantastic. But I don't think it is for the CF adapter PCBs either.

 

[jafir]

I hope to boot to Acronis CD to clone the drive. Would that work?

Probably not. I cannot image most modern bootable utilities supper anything older than a 386. And booting from CD isn’t likely on anything older than a pentium. You might find a scsi card that has a bios that would allow booting from a scsi CD drive, but I’ve never don’t it personal on an ISA system.

 

[Caluser2000]

Probably not. I cannot image most modern bootable utilities supper anything older than a 386. And booting from CD isn’t likely on anything older than a pentium. You might find a scsi card that has a bios that would allow booting from a scsi CD drive, but I’ve never don’t it personal on an ISA system.

Use can usethe PLOP boot loader on floppy disk to boot CDs on 486s. i haven't tried it on anything earlier though. It can be installed on a systems mbr as well. https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html