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Imaging/backing up data off old HDD

Joined
Oct 9, 2017
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I've got an NEC Powermate Portable SX which I recently managed to get running again, and it's HDD still works, it's a D3142 NEC 40 MB MFM drive, and I'd like to preserve the data off of it since it's only a matter of time before it dies. It's got 3 16 bit ISA slots that I could use, as well as a parallel and serial port. The floppy drive works, but only for reading, it breaks if you try writing to a disk or if you swap disks. I don't have any other machines in the house that'd support reading from the drive, so any advice would be appreciated.
 
Does any other machine(s) have serial/parallel ports? If so, have a go with a laplink cable.
 
You can also use a serial cable; it's slower, however, but will work just about anywhere you have two systems with serial ports. You can probably also use a USB-to-serial adapter if need be on the more modern system.
 
Right, do have a server with a serial port on the back I can use. Do you have any resources on going about doing this? I can sort the Linux side of things for receiving, but I'm not super experienced with regards to what tools are available on DOS for such things.
 
Actually, I should be able to figure out LapLink. I've ordered a null modem serial cable with the right connectors, so I should be able to figure it out.
 
Absent that, you could simply download a copy of a DOS terminal program for the NEC (example here) and run Minicom on your linux box. (Ctrl-A R will bring up a menu for X, Y and Zmodem reception). I've done that myself and it works well, even using a USB-to-RS232 adapter. I even use minicom to receive files via Ymodem from my various MCU projects.
 
If you're looking to clone an MFM drive, I used this hardware MFM Hard Disk Reader/Emulator and it worked wonderfully. You can buy a pre-build board here.

The board has features to let you directly read the drive onto an SD card without the computer in the loop. Once you have an image on the SD card you can then use it as an MFM drive emulator speaking directly to the computer. I was able to capture an old drive this way quite easily.
 
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