[conspire] Tempus fugit: PATA is ...

[Michael Paoli]

I've thrice bought, at Central Computers, in San Francisco,
adapter between USB and (combined) SATA/ATA/IDE/PATA.

The first I bought quite a number of years ago - USB 2.0 -
very handy.  So handy/useful I thought to buy an additional
one some years later - then one USB 3.0.  And last year I
bought same model as a gift for someone that was looking to
access/retrieve data from a bare laptop drive where the laptop
itself was quite dead.

So ... don't know about Fry's - but at least Central Computers
has generally carried the adapters - but they do also often run
out of stock (they've generally been continuing to be fairly
popular when I've been there, and not too uncommonly they're
out, or very low on stock).

However, wouldn't surprise me that the enclosures with built-in
adapter are (almost?) entirely SATA now - figure those sales are
generally for folks planning a semi-permanent installation, and
likely mostly follows more current drives.  I.e. for folks with
10+ year old drives, how many are going to want to put 'em in
external enclosure and use them a long time like that?  Probably
a *very* small (and shrinking) market.  On the other hands, folks
just wanting to access the data on a more rare basis - e.g.
service/recovery/maintenance ... probably continues to be some
reasonable demand ... hence the adapters - and adapters which
in fact interface to a few types of drive interfaces (physically
and electrically, 3 distinct types, in fact - for both of the
adapters I have).

Also ... not that attendee would necessarily heed such advice, but ...
for recovery, older drive, likely (much) smaller capacity ...
probably best to suck whole drive image copy to newer drive (as a
file).  Then make a copy of that (and even separate backup copy
on other media) ... and do the recovery from other than the first
copy - save that first copy "just in case" - if things don't go
well at any point, one can just make another copy of that base
image, and continue from that point.  Of course if one really doesn't
care about the data at all, needn't be nearly so careful ... but
sounds like said attendee was rather to quite interested in
recovering it ... but maybe just not so interested in doing some
or much of the work themselves ... but hey, that's potentially
quite legitimate too ... if they were taking it to service shop,
sounds like they were likely willing to pay for some
services/servicing.  Though how many shops are Linux competent - who
knows.  Many also have inherent conflict of interest to push/sell
new stuff that they also profit on or may profit yet more on.

And yes, did use such adapter(s) a couple years back or so in
untangling the software(, etc.?) situation on the
linuxmafia.com host.  Somewhere, I think on the sf-lug list, is
posting I did that gave fairly detailed summary of how most of
that software(/data?) fix went.  In part, a fair bit of it
became: suck image off (at least of most relevant bits),
make another copy of that, place in virtual environment,
fix it (and when certain procedures went badly, lather,
rinse, repeat, until a full "play book" was all worked
out ... then apply that solution to the physical).
Hey, it's Linux, we can fix it!  :-)

> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 01:16:13 -0800
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Subject: [conspire] Tempus fugit:  PATA is 99% gone
> Message-ID: <20170116091613.GS10278 at linuxmafia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> People who attended CABAL will remember the gentleman who arrived with a
> PATA (old 'IDE') drive from a dead Ubuntu Linux desktop system, still
> wanting to get his files off it, and uncertain whether they're still
> present.  This was a bog-standard 3.5"-platter workstation hard drive
> from ~a decade ago.
>
> He'd taken his non-functional workstation mini-tower to a PC repair
> joint, which had done some not-very-clear investigation, claimed that
> there is a valid ext4 filesystem on it, but (in the work write-up) cited
> a somewhat nonsensical explanation for why he couldn't copy the files
> off.  (To his credit, he didn't charge for this work.)  The vendor also
> gave him a quotation for a replacement PC.
>
> So, this fellow (our attendee) was still stuck wanting access to his
> old PATA hard drive's contents.  Various of us had Linux laptops, but
> his drive was -not- in an enclosure.
>
> I considered hauling out my old VA Research StartX MP workstation
> (Pentium II).  We could open the case, jumper our attendee's PATA drive
> appropriately, and hang it off the workstation's IDE chain.  Suspect the
> PII's installed system is ancient Debian that doesn't know ext4, _so_
> we could have gotten around that problem by booting a recent Knoppix CD
> or such.
>
> But at this point, I was thinking:  Lot of trouble to go to, for someone
> who's doing essentially nothing to help himself.  Every time I tried to
> get him to take notes, he cited an excuse and just stressed that he
> wanted a canned solution rather than to learn anything.  Also, I really
> felt he ought to leave with the ability read his drive going forward.
> As we repeatedly cautioned him, any new system was _not_ going to
> support PATA.
>
> So, I said, you can solve your problem by driving to Fry's in Palo Alto
> and buying an external drive case for a 3.5" hard drive with USB
> external connectors and PATA internal connectors.  He blanked and
> could not follow this.  Someone, I think it was Les Faby, offered to
> drive over with him and make sure he bought the right gear.  Our
> attendee declined, deciding instead to have his PC vendor do it.
>
> Anyway, today I happened to visit Fry's for other reasons.  Out of
> curiosity and suspecting I knew what I'd find, I checked the aisles.
>
> There are dozens of external cases for SATA hard drives, bitty ones for
> 2.5" laptop-sized drives and bigger ones for 3.5" workstation-sized
> drives.
>
> Care to guess how many models of cases for 3.5" PATA drives they carry?
>
> One.
>
> They are almost totally gone.
>
> If you want a case, better hurry.  However, remember, PATA is history
> (and also wasn't ever very good, anyway).