Accessing files off Yamaha Keyboard Harddrive

[Timmkins]

Hi,

yes. Does anyone know how to access files from a hard drive originally installed in a Yamaha PSR 8000 keyboard using a PC? What format does Yamaha use when formatting hard disks? Thanks

 

[happyrat1]

If you've already removed the hard disk then try hooking it up to a USB to IDE or SATA interface and just see if your PC picks up on it.

It's probably some modified version of FAT32 or NTFS but it may have a proprietary directory structure.

Like I said, just plug it into a USB interface and see if any of the commercial or public domain disk tools out there can read it. Don't forget to hook up the power connector as well.

I don't know the age of the keyboard. Do you know the capacity of the HDD? That would narrow it down to a range of dates and whatever was popular at the time. Is it IDE or SATA?

Gary

 

[Timmkins]

Hi Gary,

yeah, it’s from 1999, IDE 775mb PATA. Yeah, old I know. I recently got a new hard drive for my PSR 8000 as this one failed. New one purrs like a pussycat, but I think the old one has had it as HDD regenerator is flagging up loads of bad sectors on it on an Old Vista laptop. Good job I had most of my valuable data backed up although there were some custom sounds that I hadn’t

 

[happyrat1]

HDD Regenerator has worked miracles for me in the past. In my experience, the only thing it can't recover from is a damaged boot sector.

If DOS tools aren't working for reading the drive all I can suggest is try and see if you can read anything with Linux tools. Who knows? It could be using Ext2 or even Reiser file system. Back in those days Linux was pretty popular with the developers' crowd and embedded systems and there's a good chance they might have built on that platform.

If the worst case scenario arises and you're still not getting anywhere try using a sector editor to read the data directly off the drive and maybe you'll see a clue as to what their file system actually is.

Nothing is impossible if you are willing to spend enough time and energy to analyse the problem.

Good luck

Gary