68kMLA Classic Interface

This is a version of the 68kMLA forums for viewing on your favorite old mac. Visitors on modern platforms may prefer the main site.

Click here to select a new forum.
Clone Mac SE hard drive?
Posted by: riveducha on 2022-03-26 18:22:28
I recently acquired a Macintosh SE and its hard drive is full of old software. What's the best way to make a copy of the hard drive for archival purposes?

Unfortunately the next newest Mac I have is a Power Mac G3 B&W which doesn't have SCSI. Once I make a disk image and know that the files are safe, I want to replace the hard drive with some kind of SD card solution.
Posted by: Juror22 on 2022-03-26 21:45:51
One of the better investments that I made years ago, was an external SCSI hard drive that I make backups of hard drives with. I don't even remember where I got it, but it has three partitions that are several hundred MB each and it is bootable from an SE on up, so I have used it to backup Mac hard drives by just dragging the drive over and making a copy that way. I suppose if I was more worried about an exact restore afterward, I would resort to something like Retrospect and tapes or something.
Posted by: volvo242gt on 2022-03-26 22:36:14
Buy an Adaptec 2940UW or 29160N SCSI card and install it into the B&W PowerMac G3. Then you can attach the hard drive to the card after pulling from the SE and copy it to a folder on your G3's hard drive. Create the .hda image you need for the SD card, then install a BlueSCSI, RaSCSI, or SCSI2SD into the SE with the card in place. If the SE's hard drive is large enough, then put that into an external case, and use it as a backup drive.
Posted by: rollmastr on 2022-03-27 10:08:05
A SCSI Zip drive is a good way to create a backup or transfer files if you don't have a RaSCSI.
Posted by: volvo242gt on 2022-03-27 11:44:32
That'd work too. Get one of those and either a USB external for the G3 or an IDE internal for the same with the bezel.
Posted by: Skate323k137 on 2022-03-27 11:47:27
In your shoes I would ultimately figure out my new SD solution first, because if you get a scsi2sd or something, you can simply attach it externally temporarily, copy your hdd over, and then finish installation.
Posted by: riveducha on 2022-04-06 16:16:12
Thanks for the suggestions! I ended up ordering an Adaptec 2906 and plan to pop it into another desktop PC, then copy the disk contents with dd. Will that produce an image I can use with an emulator?
1