Booting a Pi from Old Hard Drives

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When I was refurbishing computers 10 years ago, we automatically considered BigFoot drives as functionally dead and wouldn't re-use them. To see that it is the one that worked here 20 years later just made me giggle.

As a Compaq repair tech in the late 90's, I can attest to the fact as "Do NOT use the Quantum Bigfoot". Compaq used them in their Presarios. Even new, their failure rate was over 50%. They were total junk. It's one of the reasons that Quantum isn't around anymore.

The days when upgrading RAM from 4MB to 8MB made a distinct difference in the sound of the HDD during boot.

Those old hard drives are still more reliable than the cheap microSD cards I see people buy from corner drug stores and expect to work as a computer's boot drive, lol.

"it's not stupid if it works, even if it's stupid." Magnificent.

That Quantum Bigfoot gave me huge Druaga1 flashbacks. Damn, I miss that dude.

The boot issue is almost certainly RISC OS. It's not exactly built to be a run-anyway operating system over something like USB boot. Last I checked it needed significant patching to just get it running on a Pi 4. That said, running it from an SD card, it should recognise the hard drives plugged in through the IDE/USB interface. I've used it in such a configuration to transfer data to/from an old RISC OS hard drive I have in a A3020. That's useful because RISC OS has its own disc formats that are difficult to read on any modern OS. Hoping you're making a video on RISC OS though since it gets very little love despite having some unique and interesting UI behaviours. Just remember you need to use all 3 mouse buttons to interact with it.

I love the thought of someone setting up a NAS using a Raspberry Pi and a dozen old IDE hard drives.

There's something about the very specific noise of this guy clicking on the mouse or typing things on the keyboard that feels like Steve is mining my brain with a diamond pickaxe

The CF card has the "removable" bit set in the drive info. You need to clear that bit...somehow.

a quantum big foot ? damn that get me some Druaga1 memories 😆

Back in ... 97 or so, I had a 3.2GB Quantum Fireball and an 8GB Quantum Bigfoot in my Pentium MMX 233mhz with a Matrox Mystique 2D and a Voodoo2 12MB. It was GLORIOUS and I remember having people ask 'What are you even ever going to do to fill more than 10GB of HD space?! That's nuts!'

"You wouldn't download a car". Yes, yes I would definitely download a car. Why not?

Those hard drive clicks bring a flood of LCIII and 486 memories.

The square dongle has 3 connectors, 2.5" IDE PATA 44pin 2mm pin pitch connector which includes power, the 40 pin PATA 3.5" ide connector you where using. And of course the regular SATA connector.

Saw the thumbnail and my inner Druaga1 came out and said "ITS A QUANTUM BIGFOOT!"

People might think this doesn’t have a use, but it actually does (for once). If you want to build a sleeper PC, use its original drive and just throw a Pi in there as a new machine.

Just a hunch, but I sense a certain cursed black computer case making a come back