Commercially available SCSI Write-blockers

[Emanuel Lorrain]

Hello everyone,

I've used the search function of the list to make sure that this question wasn't answered before, if it was, sorry.
I need to image some SCSI hard-drives and I'm looking to buy or to build a SCSI write blocker. It seems that commercial SCSI write-blockers such as the T4 from Tableau are really hard to find on the second-hand market. I would be interested to know of any alternative to the T4, preferably portable and affordable for small institutions.

Thank you!

[Michael Kjörling]

On 21 Jun 2016 01:45 -0700, from ema...@packed.be (Emanuel Lorrain):

> I need to image some SCSI hard-drives and I'm looking to buy or to build a
> SCSI write blocker. It seems that commercial SCSI write-blockers such as
> the T4 from Tableau are really hard to find on the second-hand market. I
> would be interested to know of any alternative to the T4, preferably
> portable and affordable for small institutions.

Which SCSI variant are you interested in? As I recall, there were a
number of SCSI variants with physically incompatible connectors. It
might help if you can specify the variant.

I'll admit that I am _assuming_ here that you aren't talking about
SAS, which technically _is_ SCSI, but about the traditional kind with
devices daisy-chained on a parallel bus that required bus terminators.

--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • mic...@kjorling.se
“People who think they know everything really annoy
those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)

[Emanuel Lorrain]

Hej Michael,

Thank you for your answer. Indeed I'm not talking about SAS but about 50-pins SCSI (II) hard drives that are for instance found in old Power Macintosh from the 1990s.

Thanks!

[Porter Olsen]

I tried to track down a SCSI write blocker last year and wasn't able to find anything actively available. I was looking into methods for capturing server hard drives, which, at least in the past, were commonly SCSI. I came up with two alternatives: First is to boot off of a Linux liveCD (I used BitCurator, but any Linux flavor would do). I like this solution because you can image the drive as a block device, meaning you never have to mount it (writable, read-only, or otherwise) making this approach an effective form of write protection. The second alternative is to add a SCSI controller card to your PC. These are still widely available and would probably cost you less than write protector anyway. Once again, after connecting the drive, you could boot into Linux and image the drive as a block device without mounting it.

Not what you were asking for, but hopefully helpful. I'd be very interested to hear if you find an available SCSI write blocker.

Porter

[Emanuel Lorrain]

Hello Porter,

Thank you for sharing the solution you used yourself. For now I will probably have to set-up something like that as I haven't found a solution that would be more portable. I was looking into the possibility of using something like the USB2Xchange SCSI-USB converter together with a USB write-blocker, but it's just an idea as I don't know how the USB2Xchange works yet.

Best,

Emanuel

On Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 4:47:24 PM UTC+2, Emanuel Lorrain wrote: