I recently helped a MacMedics customer recover 33-year-old data from an 80MB (That’s Megabyte!) 2.5-inch SCSI hard drive. The BIOS of the SCSI drive was so old that my usual method did not work. Instead, I used a 1990 Mac to read the customer’s SCSI drive, which I mounted externally. The rescue computer had a FireWIre 400 PCI card so that I could get the data off that Mac. I then used the FireWire drive on a more modern Mac to copy the data to a USB Flash drive.
The drive’s motor bearings were stuck, which I knew was an issue for these drives. I got it spun up by giving it a gyroscopic twist assist while it was trying to spin up.
When the customer came to pick up the data recovery case, he said, “I bet you’re the only place around here that can do this kind of work.” He’s not wrong!
