Seeking insights regarding connecting SCSI external drive to G4 with OS X

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Seeking insights regarding connecting SCSI external drive to G4 with OS X

I have a couple of old external scsi hard drives from pre-OS X days which I need to get some old data from but am unable to access. I currently am running OS X 10.3.9 on a G4. (I also have an old Preforma 6300 and a Power Mac 9600 with OS 8.5 equipped with scsi cards but they will no longer mount the drives to the desk tops - I have tried reinstalling the FWB Hard Disk Tool Kit software ver 2.5 which I used originally to mount the drives but the old Macs keep freezing). The G4 does not have a scsi card installed and even if it did, I doubt I could find a driver for the mount software that would work with 10.3.9 (FWB does not appear to exist any longer). I saw a SCSI to USB converter (MICROTECH DB25 USB to SCSI CABLE CONVERTER)and wondered if that might work. Has anyone had any experience with this converter and do you know if it will work with OS X 10.3.9? Failing that, any other suggestions or guidance? TX!

G4, Mac OS X (10.3.x)

Posted on Mar 30, 2008 3:01 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 30, 2008 6:30 PM in response to waderwally

Hi! If the OS 8.6 won't mount the drives (and it used to) then you're going to have a hard time getting them recognized in OSX. Did you have their ID addresses set correctly? Did you try to mount them with SCSI PROBE. SILVERLININGPRO is a good OS9 scsi mounter and formatter but I don't know if you can still find an OS 8.6 version. Tom

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Answer 2

waderwally Author

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Mar 30, 2008 7:15 PM in response to Thomas Bryant

Hi Tom. TX for the reply! The IDs are set correctly. Interestingly, on the units with OS 8.5 the system acknowledges that the drive is attached - When FWB Hard Disk Tool Kit is run, it checks the drive, reports no errors and identifies the partitions on the drive. However, when I try to mount it either the Hard Disk Tool Kit program freezes or the the computer freezes in general. I thought that possibly there was an extension conflicting with the mounting software so I tried rebooting with extensions off. This didn't work either.

I will try SCSI Probe as you suggested.

Again, TX!
Rick

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