ST3243A Hard drive imaging

[Bastich]

Hello

I have an old A4000 from a now defunct games company called 'Interactive Studios' later called 'Blitz'. It has a hard drive with some old game art work on it and possibly a few other interesting files. It is a noisy drive but when attached to the A4000 does work. Transferring files by serial or floppy will take forever so I want to image the drive and save anything possible before it fails. I am however having problems trying to image the hard drive using WinUAE. I have done it in the past without issues but that was a long time ago.The drive is plugged in via a USB to IDE interface.

Under Windows 10 64bit it does not recognise it properly although it does appear in the hard drive list. However it always says failed to create image when attempting to image it.

Under Windows XP 32bit the drive appears in device manager with the correct name however WinUAE freezes when clicking the add hard drive button. The drive make some noises as of its being queried but then nothing

Taken from winuaeboitlog.txt
opening device '\\?\usbstor#disk&ven_st3243a&prod_&rev_0041#000000000033&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}'
device ID adding: 'ST3243A 0041'
......
IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO returned size: 0
......
IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT failed with error code 21
IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_DIRECT: 28.00.00.00.00.01.00.00.01.00.

I did have to unplug it to get WinUAE to respond. Once unplugged the add drive dialog appeared.

Does anyone have any ideas? It would be a shame to lose the drive contents.

[rare_j]

There was a thread a while back where Toni investigated this. I think he came to the conclusion that very old hard drives can be made to work properly if the usb adapter also supports old drive interface controls.
Sorry I can't find the topic now. Perhaps someone else can remember it.
I definately remember having some success with my old usb adapter and old hard drive though.

[Bastich]

Any idea what pcie cards support old drives?

I've found one with the JMB363 Chipset for a good price. There does not appear to be many other options

Got one ordered fingers crossed.

[Toni Wilen]

Check http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=87269 for more details.

Most USB IDE adapters should work with WinUAE 3.6.1+ if drive is CHS-only. (Which is usually true if Windows reports zero size drive).

Does Windows report USB error if you wait about 1 minute after it hangs?

DOes WinUAE ask for drive geometry if you click "Create hard disk image file"? If it does, type correct geometry (should be printed on drive label) and test if working image file gets created.

Note that CHS-only drives don't support writing in WinUAE so it isn't very useful for transferring data from PC to disk. (I didn't bother with it because CHS only drives are ancient and it should be imaged first and then replaced with something more modern)

[rare_j]

Sorry, I don't know. But here's the topic that I think is relevant:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=88136
Hopefully there is quite some useful info here.
Edit - Toni's link is likely to be more useful.

[Bastich]

So close but still no good

I dug out an old AM2 board which I have a working W7 32bit install for as it has an IDE port on it.

The BIOS sees it.
Windows Disk Management sees it.
WinUAE sees it but says access denied.

Run WinUAE (3.6.1 or 4.0.0 beta from the other thread) as administrator and then it doesn't see it

A bit stuck what to try now TBH

[Toni Wilen]

Run winuae without loading any configs as admin, click add harddrive. Exit. Attach winuaebootlog.txt.

[Bastich]

Thanks Toni
I will reassemble it this afternoon and post you the log files.

[Bastich]

Here you go Toni hope this helps
It looks like it reads the drive size correctly.
But it then says 'hd ignored, do_scsi_read10_chs failed'

[Toni Wilen]

What kind of USB adapter do you have? Manufacturer/model or USB VID/PID values for example from Windows device manager.

It seems to support native ATA passthrough but winuae does not use it for reading because I didn't find any USB adapters that supports ATA passthrough, which made testing impossible.

Could you copy and paste output from winuae window that opens when you click "read identity" button. (in same window that has hd image button)

[Bastich]

The tests above were using a motherboard which has an IDE port (ASUS M2N68-AM SE2). The 'read identity' button is greyed out regardless of running it as admin or not.

The USB adapter which I have is called an 'R-Driver III'. The files included in this post are from the USB adapter. If I use it in admin or normal mode the drive appears but without a proper name '[OS] [0K,RW] USB TO I DE/SATA Device 0041' (VID: 05e3, PID: 0718).

[Toni Wilen]

Oops, Read Identity requires selected drive but drive is not listed because CHS read fails..

Does this version: http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae.7z show the drive and read identity returns identity data? (Not tested because I don't have working PCs with mainboard IDE anymore)

[Bastich]

Hi Toni

That worked perfectly. It recognised the drive and created an image with no errors. I will have a good look through the image soon.

[Bastich]

Quick view of some of the things on the drive

There are a few Cinema4D etc things as I think this A4000 was still being used to produce textures and models for the original PSX.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Bastich

That worked perfectly. It recognised the drive and created an image with no errors. I will have a good look through the image soon.

Great! Too simple missing feature done

I'd have expected Windows native mainboard ide drivers to support CHS. Unless it is some higher level component (that obsoleted CHS ages ago) that creates IDE commands and IDE driver only handles the hardware communication.

[Bastich]

Thanks for your help and all your awesome work on WinUAE. It's by far the best and most feature rich Amiga emulator

[mark_k]

Just wondering... in order to access an IDE slave drive, do you need to set the drive select bit (bit 4 in drive/head register), or does Windows do that automatically?

[Bastich]

I only had the one drive attached so just set the jumpers to master and WinUAE did the rest

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by mark_k

Just wondering... in order to access an IDE slave drive, do you need to set the drive select bit (bit 4 in drive/head register), or does Windows do that automatically?

WinUAE has no idea if it is slave or master so Windows probably does it automatically.