So my buddy said his older brother has some BTC stashed on an old HDD (he thinks it's about 0.3 BTC). I offered to help out, and when I got to his place, he handed me this really bizarre HDD that I've never seen before. It has this strange port, and he mentioned he tried to find the right cable but had no luck.
I have a few PCs, but none of them have a connector for this HDD.
So what’s up with that odd cable port? I only know about SATA cables and the four-pin power connector. Anyone got any ideas on what I can do? I checked a couple of local computer shops, but they don’t have that cable either.
It is called an IDE cable. Easily available but any PC less than maybe 15 years old will need an IDE adapter card to use it. Because the SATA spec is much much faster mobo's rarely directly support IDE spec anymore.
You are looking at a completely standard PATA/IDE drive from the 90s or 2000s. If your motherboard does not have an IDE controller (no corresponding connector), you can try to get a cheap IDE to SATA or IDE to USB adapter at your local electronics store or order online via Aliexpress or Ebay.
But to be brutally honest here: if you have never even seen an IDE drive before, you are completely out of your depth. I suggest you seek help from someone at least a little more experienced before you do more damage to that drive and completely destroy the data.
I disagree. I could make a long list of connectors you have probably never even heard about and that does not mean you are stupid or 'out of your depth'. It is simply a Hard Drive. Your level of Bitcoin knowledge is is in no way influenced by knowing Hard Drive connectors in detail or not.
Hell. Even I could not remember the name at first. It has been long enough since I last saw one that I could not remember the name properly. If anything I would really not rely on the 'help' of someone 'experienced'. Give that Hard Drive to anyone else and consider that Bitcoin lost because if they ever sweep it from the Drive you do not have any way of proving they were the ones who stole it.
Around 12 $ at Aliexpress
This hard drive looks like an IDE/PATA drive from late 90s. How did your friend leave something so important in this condition for so many years?
I am pretty sure that 0.3 BTC could be gone forever. Because if you leave these drives for too long, the files get corrupted.
Don't try any cables. Buy a cheap IDE to USB adapter as Stalker22 said. Connect it carefully, if possible it would be better to connect it to an old PC. And before trying to access the wallet, you can clone or backup the entire drive. If you don't have experience in this line, you can take help from a friend who understands hardware.
You are completely missing the point here, and honestly, I think you are giving some pretty dangerous advice. Its not about insulting their intelligence; but about basic competence. If someone gets a 20-year-old drive with a legacy wallet on it and cant even identify the interface in front of them, its a dead giveaway that they have zero experience with this kind of tech.
If you dont even know what interface you are looking at, how are you going to safely image the drive, handle bit rot, or extract the wallet file without corrupting the data?
Besides, there is a massive difference between "seeking expert help" and "blindly trusting a stranger." You can consult someone with technical expertise to figure out the hardware interface, set up a write-blocker, or walk through an air-gapped data recovery process without ever giving them access to the actual wallet file or private keys.
New motherboards nowadays seem to have no slot for IDE cable; you don't have another option here but to use the adapter or enclosure as suggested above.
If you willing to recover something, the above cheap adapter would work unless the drive itself is not working properly. You would need an expert here to recover all data from that drive. The issue might be something inside the the control board or the pin itself.
Before buying an enclosure, I suggest choose the one that includes a power supply to power the drive because most of the adapters nowadays seem not to include this power supply.
OP is clearly asking for help and I believe by that the first right step was taken. The next right step in my paranoid mind would not be to give that Hard Drive to a stranger, even if they are offering 'expert help'. If OP is silly enough to try and recover the old wallet on their own then I suppose they may also be silly enough to receive 'expert help' from an Indian promising immediate recovery through AnyDesk.
This seem to be a perfect fit for he wants , and at a cheaper price.
Not his friend directly , he mentioned "elder brother" in the OP.
You can't be too sure about that. It's worth giving it a try before reaching a lost forever conclusion, and that's only if there's no other way to revive it.
He should clean the dust and wipe those gold pins clean before plugging it into the adapter.
He doesn't need an old PC, it's an HDD connected to an adapter
Some enclosures don't have separate power? I have two different enclosures for SATA and IDE and they come with their own power bricks, OP need to make sure to buy a better enclosure with power brick, it should work since he will be connecting it back to a PC, every files will be visible unless something bad is already wrong with that HDD.
Something like this will work, it's what I am currently using, don't buy enclosure without that power brick or you will have to hunt for one that will work with the enclosure,same position I found myself two years ago, I had to use a old router power bring and unexpectedly it worked.
Agreed.
I'm no tech expert, but even I know there's a way to connect that hard drive to your PC with an appropriate adapter, and as long as the drive is handled carefully it shouldn't get damaged in the process. That said, I would suggest OP listen to members here who are tech heads and know what they're talking about. There are plenty of them even if they're disagreeing with each other initially (lol).
For what it's worth, you can buy adapters that aren't enclosures and can be plugged into a standard outlet for power. I've got one of those, it works perfectly, and it was fairly inexpensive too.
Good luck to you--that's no small amount of BTC these days.
I have that cable, I am very sure that my Pentium 4 pc that I left in my store used the same Data cable, where are you from OP? I can help send you one, oh wait, you will then need a old PC to even use that cable, it's not going to work I guess.
The only option is buying a external enclosure for IDE, I'm still wondering where you are from because if truly you get down to a computer store nearby they should be able to tell what to do even if they don't have the cable available.
People don't use pentium and core 2 duo pc anymore, which is where such connection exists, the only solution left is enclosure, follow the lead of what others told you.
From the pictures it looks like it is older IDE (PATA) connector instead of SATA. They were common in drives prior to around 2007-2008 before the switch to SATA was made. Obvious sign is wide flat ribbon cable connector.
It requires two cables to connect, molex 4-pin power cable and an IDE ribbon cable. There are also IDE to USB adapters which would be the easiest option, they are known as IDE/SATA to USB adapters and support both types of connections. They are available from some computer repair shops but are easier to find online.
I do have the cable and a PC to use with it, but sadly I guess you're too far away for that.
You must have felt like Indiana Jones with this artifact in your hands. I hope to see the continuation of this story (and you will be able to successfully extract bitcoins). To be honest, I myself would volunteer if I were you, purely out of curiosity and the opportunity to touch the past era of bitcoin.
Because the legacy IDE interface has long been abandoned by motherboard manufacturers. It's also a bygone era.
So, this is what modern treasure chests (with bitcoins) look like.
It's not a strange port, but an outdated one. Of course, you probably won't find something in your local stores that hasn't been used for a long time.