Just catching up with this thread after a long time away from the board. Sounds like great progress. Just a suggestion here. What might be helpful is a summary in one post on how to back up the drive or clone it to SDD. Something simple like: Step 1 - remove drive from the Z3200... Step 2 - disconnect drive from interface board... Step 3 - Connect SATA drive to a computer running Linux. Step 4 - issue these commands in this order... etc. Instructions that us less Linux fluent owners could follow easily
Here's a rough outline:
Requirements:
1) Computer running Linux with "hdparm" and "parted" utilities installed.
2) Disk off your formatter board. (This is the SOURCE)
3) A target disk to clone to OR sufficient disk space (80+ GB) on your Linux PC. (This is the TARGET)
4) A USB to SATA adapter which supports passing ATA Security commands or having your source hard drive directly connected to the Linux computer's onboard SATA connectors.
5) Enough working knowledge of Linux/command lines or ability to read some HOWTOs.
Process:
1) Connect drives and boot Linux PC. Login and switch to root user.
2) Determine which drive is what by using "parted -l" which will give you output like this:
Model: KBG40ZNS256G NVMe TOSHIBA 256GB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 256GB
So you can see make/model of the drive and its corresponding /dev/device entry, which you need for the next steps.
3) When you figure out what your SOURCE hard drive disk location is (I'm going to assume /dev/sdb), issue "hdparm -I /dev/sdb" and you should get something like this:
# hdparm -I /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
[...]
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
enabled
locked
not frozen
expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
Security level high
4min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
[...]
The key point is your SOURCE drive is LOCKED at this point. You need to unlock it.
4) Issue "hdparm --user-master u --security-unlock "MartaLaiaDesiree" /dev/sdb" to unlock the drive.
5) At this point you should be able to see partition on your drive:
# fdisk /dev/sdb
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 298.9 GiB, 320072933376 bytes, 625142448 sectors
Disk model: [redacted]
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: [redacted]
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 * 63 273104 273042 133.3M 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 273105 2281229 2008125 980.5M 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 2281230 18298034 16016805 7.7G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 18298035 156296384 137998350 65.8G 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 18298098 20306159 2008062 980.5M 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 20306223 62316134 42009912 20G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7 62316198 120326849 58010652 27.7G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb8 120326913 156296384 35969472 17.2G 83 Linux
This is the point at which you can tinker with things on your drive by mounting those partitions and editing the files AND/OR clone your drive to another drive or make a backup image.
https://medium.com/codex/the-art-of-cloning-disks-the-dd-command-primary-usage-patterns-ff377b7616c9 A general guide for cloning disks.