Attempting to Access Disk from Antiquated Software (Akai MPC)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Haus of Tech Support > Attempting to Access Disk from Antiquated Software (Akai MPC)

BIG-DICK-BUTT-FUCK: Jan 26, 2016; by Fluffdaddy

Hello Beloved Goons, I have this drum machine:

And I would like to back up the CF card I use for it. The software dates back to 1994 and as expected my PC with Windows10 can't access the drive. I receive this message:

I have a third-party operating system on my MPC that claims to format CF cards in such a manner so as to be accessible from a PC, by using hybrid partitions. The operating system itself dates back to like 2009 and may not be compatible with Windows10.

I am able to access the card from a Mac, but only the first partition. I have tried "forensic software" on the recommendation of others like WinHex but I receive the same message when attempting to access the drive.

:siren:

I'll give an avvy certificate to the goon who helps me back up my disk drive :siren:

# ? May 20, 2016 00:26

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 02:48

Lysidas: Jul 26, 2002; John Diefenbaker is a madman who thinks he's John Diefenbaker.; Pillbug

BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:

Hello Beloved Goons, I have this drum machine:

And I would like to back up the CF card I use for it. The software dates back to 1994 and as expected my PC with Windows10 can't access the drive. I receive this message:

I have a third-party operating system on my MPC that claims to format CF cards in such a manner so as to be accessible from a PC, by using hybrid partitions. The operating system itself dates back to like 2009 and may not be compatible with Windows10.

I am able to access the card from a Mac, but only the first partition. I have tried "forensic software" on the recommendation of others like WinHex but I receive the same message when attempting to access the drive.

I'll give an avvy certificate to the goon who helps me back up my disk drive

What do you mean by "back up"? Create a copy on your PC which you can look through, to get any data that you might want, without using the old hardware? Or to create a copy on your PC that you can use to restore onto a new CF card if the one you're using dies?

If the first, I don't have any useful advice besides "maybe try a Linux system". There's a marginally higher chance that a Linux kernel can understand whatever filesystems are in use on the CF card, but I wouldn't bet on that.

For the second, you may as well just completely ignore the meaning of what's on the CF card -- treat the card itself as a raw sequence of bytes, and copy that entire sequence of bytes to a file somewhere. In Mac OS you can identify the CF card by opening a terminal and running diskutil list, which will list a few disks like /dev/disk0, /dev/disk1, etc. You can then copy the CF card to a file with sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskN of=path/to/file bs=1024k or something like that -- note that I deliberately added the r to the CF card path, to use the "raw" disk device. The block size (bs) doesn't matter much, but using a large block size decreases the number of system calls required to read the entire disk and a higher number can perform better up to some point of diminishing returns. 1MB is reasonable I think.

# ? May 20, 2016 14:25

BIG-DICK-BUTT-FUCK: Jan 26, 2016; by Fluffdaddy

Lysidas posted:

Or to create a copy on your PC that you can use to restore onto a new CF card if the one you're using dies?

Yes! Precisely this. it seems like files will corrupt from time to time and I just want the ability to back the entire card up. No need to access the individual files or anything like that

quote:

For the second, you may as well just completely ignore the meaning of what's on the CF card -- treat the card itself as a raw sequence of bytes, and copy that entire sequence of bytes to a file somewhere. In Mac OS you can identify the CF card by opening a terminal and running diskutil list, which will list a few disks like /dev/disk0, /dev/disk1, etc. You can then copy the CF card to a file with sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskN of=path/to/file bs=1024k or something like that -- note that I deliberately added the r to the CF card path, to use the "raw" disk device. The block size (bs) doesn't matter much, but using a large block size decreases the number of system calls required to read the entire disk and a higher number can perform better up to some point of diminishing returns. 1MB is reasonable I think.

Ok a few questions:

1) Can this be done on a PC running Windows10 instead?

2) I think I can follow your directions about the Mac Commandline stuff. So this would make an exact copy of the raw data on the disk, partitions and all? To clarify, the disk is a 1gb CF card with 26 hybrid partitions of 32megabytes each. I am currently able to access the first partition from a Mac no issue but it doesn't seem like there's anyway to access the other partitions.

3) Other users of this machine have mentioned copying the SCSI disk as an "image file" using an imaging utility...does this mean anything to you? Is this a viable approach?

Thank you very much for contributing, I appreciate your assistance

# ? May 20, 2016 16:11

Lysidas: Jul 26, 2002; John Diefenbaker is a madman who thinks he's John Diefenbaker.; Pillbug

BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:

Ok a few questions:

1) Can this be done on a PC running Windows10 instead?

Yes, but I use Windows quite rarely and so I'm not familiar with any software that you could use to do this. I've seen people mention Acronis or DriveImage XML, and a few other tools, but can't give any specific positive or negative recommendations. Linux and Unix systems, including Mac OS, make this easier by presenting raw devices (like disks and partitions) as files that you can manipulate with almost any tool that expects to deal with files. The one caveat is that you almost always need to run things as the administrative (root) user to do so, hence the sudo that I included above.

BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:

2) I think I can follow your directions about the Mac Commandline stuff. So this would make an exact copy of the raw data on the disk, partitions and all? To clarify, the disk is a 1gb CF card with 26 hybrid partitions of 32megabytes each. I am currently able to access the first partition from a Mac no issue but it doesn't seem like there's anyway to access the other partitions.

Yes, this will make an exact copy of the CF card, including the partition table and all partitions. You will end up with a 1GB file on your computer, that you can then copy back to the CF card if you'd like, or to a new CF card if this one dies.

BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:

3) Other users of this machine have mentioned copying the SCSI disk as an "image file" using an imaging utility...does this mean anything to you? Is this a viable approach?

That's exactly what the Linux/Unix command I mentioned will do. It's essentially the same as cp /dev/rdiskN path/to/some/local/file, but out of habit I tend to use dd for copying disks. This is easier than in Windows for reasons I mentioned above; as far as I know there's no easy way to run a built-in command in Windows that will copy an entire disk to a file, or vice-versa.

# ? May 20, 2016 17:25

BIG-DICK-BUTT-FUCK: Jan 26, 2016; by Fluffdaddy

Wow great thanks so much!!! Please let me know how I can send you your avatar cert

(no PMs please)

# ? May 21, 2016 21:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Haus of Tech Support > Attempting to Access Disk from Antiquated Software (Akai MPC)