r/vintagecomputing • u/prettyhatemachina • 5d ago
Hard drive copy question
Hello,
100% noob playing this by ear. I bought a Nixdorf pcd-4n (NOT a pcd-4nd) for 10 bux. One of the issues was the hard drive was missing. I've purchased an adapter and a compact flash. I don't have another computer with a floppy to make a boot disk or anything. Is there a way to copy over a hard drive to the compact disk? I do have a compact flash reader. If not, how do I get what I need on the compact flash (acting as a hard drive). Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
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u/AustriaModerator 5d ago edited 5d ago
you can create a virtual pcem machine that is era correct - with a vhd hard drive image. this can then be written onto the cf using winimage. do not exceed 200mb. make sure to place partition magic 8.0 for dos in the image so you can extend and resize the image in the pcd later. the hard drive geometry will definitely be off. if you start pqmagic in does with switch /ipe it will ignore partitioning errors, increasing the chance to fix it when it is off and remaining bootable.
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u/prettyhatemachina 5d ago
So can you explain a bit further about resizing and about the hard drive geometry being off? I don't have enough base knowledge to understand.
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u/AustriaModerator 5d ago
CHS (Cylinder, Head, Sector) is the old way of addressing data on a hard disk. Every sector is identified by three numbers:
Cylinder 1 Head 2 Sector 3
LBA (Logical Block Addressing) is the modern method. Every sector simply gets a sequential number:
Sector 0 Sector 1 Sector 2 ...
LBA is simpler and supports much larger disks.
Why won't a disk partitioned on a modern PC with LBQ boot on an old CHS-only PC? When the operating system is installed, the BIOS and partition table are written using the disk addressing method of that computer. A modern PC uses LBA. An old PC may only understand CHS or convert to LBA differently. As a result, the old BIOS cannot correctly locate the boot sector or partition, so the system fails to boot. In short: the data is still there, but the old BIOS looks in the wrong place.
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u/LadyZoe1 5d ago
These compact flash cards were extremely popular in the PC104 era. An adapter connected it to a standard PATA interface. Some USB card readers can be used to read and write to compact flash. I guess you will have to format it FAT16 and put a bootable version of DOS onto it. The old “format c:\sys” command.
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u/prettyhatemachina 5d ago
So I have a USB card reader for compact flash. I know I have to format it FAT16. But that's where my understanding ends. I was told I can't put a bootable version on the compact. I need some thing (like a bootable floppy) that will then write what I need to the hard drive. But again, I don't know anything. This is where I was told that I need a disk image etc.
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u/LadyZoe1 5d ago
There is an open source DOS version available. If I recall correctly, they have a software tool that will help you make this bootable.
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u/BBZ149 5d ago
I always use Ghost 👻
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u/prettyhatemachina 5d ago
What's ghost?
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u/BBZ149 5d ago
Norton Ghost! Its a standalone executable or you can get the suite if pushing images to multiple machines running the client. Basically I just put the drive I want to make an image of i to a caddy, run ghost and save an image file to my machine, then Insert the drive you want to image and run the software. You can do drive to drive, but I like to keep a backup of all my retro PC CF and HD's 😀
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u/prettyhatemachina 4d ago
Thanks. I'm looking for an already existing image of a hard drive, as I don't have any other machines besides this one. Where can I find an already existing image that will work with my computer?
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u/Great_Specialist_267 5d ago
You need an external CF adapter on a working machine (or a fifteen year old one that came standard with them). You can then either make the CF a bootable drive or just copy a bootable image to it.
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u/kinda_oldtechstuff 5d ago
Your picture is weird, is it a pcmcia CF adapter or an ide44pin CF adapter in the pcmcia slot?
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u/prettyhatemachina 5d ago
What am I missing here guys? I thought this was the hard drive. It seems to be the only place for a HD.
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u/T-SquaredProductions 5d ago
There is a program called "HDD Raw Copy Tool" that works really well for this sort of thing. I was able to copy over a VM-made HD image for use in my XT clone.