Help to obtain Alpha HD back-up on PC

[Parris]

I am trying to obtain a back-up of the contents of my newly acquired Alpha unit. It has a number of interesting additions on the drive, which really need to be saved before an electrical spike (or one of my children) destroys them for good! (Actually, at the rate I am going, I pose the greater threat currently!)

Downloaded Ghost V9.0 to my PC and set the Western Digital 250AA (20.5Gb) HD to "Slave" setting. Once I power up my PC I can hear it churn, but then I can't get it to appear anywhere in "My Computer" or in Ghost.

If I select any other jumper setting I don't even get that far. My PC fails to detect the main HD I boot from and goes into BIOS set-up options.

This is where my limited knowledge of such things comes to a grinding halt. At heart I am a gamer, not a techie and I fear doing untold damage to the contents of this Alpha HD (frankly it's unique).

The call has gone out via another forum & via email for Alpha owners (like OE) to get in-touch, but I really could do with some background information or advice.

I haven't run any discwizards or set-ups for the HD, which is what I've had to do in the past for standard PC HD such as my Seagate 160Gb drive. I did think Windoze XP featured sufficient plug & play these days to locate HD with the minimum of fuss.

Can I just warn anyone in advance who might be responding. A) I got 2hrs sleep last night 2) my son woke me up by jumping on me and dragged me bleary eyed at 8am to make breakfast for him (ON A SUNDAY!) so I am not at my best & 3) I am NOT software minded, I need SAT NAV quality guidance i.e (turn left here, forward 200yds, stop! You are home!)

Thanks!

[the_steadster]

Does it appear if you:
Right click my computer
Select Manage
Select disk management on the left?

[Parris]

Hi matey, thanks for that - look in GH, we managed to get in using an alternative method.

;-)

How did the NR Reader end up? Did it turn up with the new owner or has it disappeared completely?

[the_steadster]

Nope, came back saying 'address unknown' - and a big sticker plastered across the recipients address! sent it back and hopefully it'll manage to make it there this time...

[smf]

Downloaded Ghost V9.0 to my PC and set the Western Digital 250AA (20.5Gb) HD to "Slave" setting. Once I power up my PC I can hear it churn, but then I can't get it to appear anywhere in "My Computer" or in Ghost.


Alot of software will only show you the drive if the file system is recognised. However, the software developed for MAME for backing up hard disk drives has to be able to cope with anything:

http://aarongiles.com/?p=97

chdman.exe should come with all mame distributions, grab the latest official binary from http://mamedev.org/release.html

If the drive doesn't show up in computer management, then it might be locked. I have no idea whether the alpha drives were locked or how to unlock xbox hard drives.

chdman.exe is quite simple, but as a command line tool you have to be careful. -createhd is used to read a drive & shouldn't be destructive, be careful when using -extract as you can easily write the image to the wrong drive ( if you have a couple of drives plugged in, including memory sticks etc then double, triple check or unplug them ).

smf

[oldengineer]

This has all been sorted...Hopefully Parris won't object to me replying on his behalf.

[Parris]

Thanks OE! Steadster, if the NR Reader is returned once more (kind of hopes) then let me know via GH PM as I would be willing to take it off your hands.

Cheers for the responses, but as OE states - job done!