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I am trying to recover data from an old Linux that was installed in a computer on an ATA hard drive. I found a ScanLogic Corp. SL11R-IDE IDE Bridge (04ce:0002), an ATA adapter to USB 1.0 like the one in the picture:

enter image description here and after switching it on, I plugged it into a laptop with Ubuntu 12.04. I am used to the drives being automatically mounted, but this one doesn't show up in /media. After doing a dmesg, all I got is this:

[215298.671924] usb 2-1.1: new full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
[215298.767330] scsi19 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0
[215299.841701] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
[215300.017258] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
[215300.197050] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
[215300.372730] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd

I tried plugging in the adapter to the three different USB ports in my laptop (one of them USB 3.0), but got no luck with any of them. I get different devices under, for example: /dev/bus/usb/003/002 or /dev/bus/usb/002/004, but I don't get any /dev/sdbN links. The output blkid -o list -c /dev/null is just the laptop's partitions.

I have tried taking out the jumper, putting it as master and as CS Enabled, but didn't change the result.

If I plug it into a Windows7 laptop, the device is recognised but nothing is mounted. When I plug it into the Windows7 laptop and connect the device to a VMWare Ubuntu 12.04 session running on Windows7, I get the same results as with the Ubuntu laptop -- the dmesg results as above, but it is not mounted.

Any ideas?

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  • Are you by any chance plugging in the adapter in a USB 3.0 port?
    – SirCharlo
    Sep 4, 2012 at 18:32
  • @SirCharlo: I tried plugging in the adapter to the three different USB ports in my laptop (one of them USB 3.0), but got no luck with any of them.
    – 719016
    Sep 4, 2012 at 18:43
  • Repost? superuser.com/questions/470324/…
    – Mateo
    Sep 7, 2012 at 0:52

2 Answers 2

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+250

The problem is that your USB-IDE chipset is very old and known to be broken (buggy) :

  • Your adapter uses the USB 1.0 Scanlogic (now Cypress Semiconductor) SL11RIDE chipset
    • This chipset was released sixteen years ago, in 1996-97
    • The version you have may not even fully support the USB Mass-storage standard, which was only finalized in 1999.
  • Even within a few years of release, the SL11RIDE was known to be problematic with IDE hard drives (but worked with optical drives): example
  • Its USB implementation is known to be broken, requiring special fixes in the kernel -- see this Ubuntu bug from 8.10
  • Upgrading the firmware may work, but there are two problems;

Simple solution

The simplest solution, therefore, appears to be to purchase a new USB-to-IDE adapter which is relatively cheap. If you can tell us your country of residence, I can try to recommend an available vendor/device which is known to work well with Linux.

Alternative solution: rebuild usb kernel modules after patching "unusual devices" and hope it works

  • Please add a comment if you need more detailed instructions
  • Get the Ubuntu kernel source
  • Change to the linux-3.2.0 directory
  • In the drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h file, find this part:

    UNUSUAL_DEV(  0x04ce, 0x0002, 0x026c, 0x026c,
                "ScanLogic",
                "SL11R-IDE",
                USB_SC_DEVICE, USB_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
                US_FL_FIX_CAPACITY),
    
  • and edit it to change the first 0x026c to 0x0000, i.e. the line should read:

    UNUSUAL_DEV(  0x04ce, 0x0002, 0x0000, 0x026c,
    
  • Then rebuild the USB storage modules and move the .ko files to the appropriate kernel under /lib/modules. This patch allows the unusual "fixes" to apply to all firmware versions of the SL11RIDE, not just firmware versions 2.xxx.

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I've had trouble with some old USB adapters on Ubuntu as well. I'm not experienced enough to tell you why, though. But if you have the time, you can always buy a new adapter online. They are really cheap. I got mine for 2 USD. I'm not saying it will solve your problem, but it might be worth testing, plus you usually get a s-ata adapter along as well.

Buying a new adapter worked for me. Seems like you are far more experienced than me, though. So if you are sure it's not the adapter, please ignore this answer :)

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