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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Looks like legit with that old HDD and that cable that everyone talked about the old IDE. I wonder what's the update now OP if ever you've already found the cable for that HDD. You've been trusted by your friend and his older brother to retrieve it on that hard disk. I hope that you won't just pass it on to any technician that has an idea about retrieving wallets and old files through it because the password of the wallet might be in the files for it. Do it alone with some guidance since they've entrusted you that hdd and, good luck.

This thread makes me feel incredibly old. Not just because apparently IDE cables are something that people today don’t even recognize, but I actually have the exact same style hard drive with a burnt fuse that also holds ~0.4 BTC on it. A strange coincidence I guess. One of these days I should fix mine too.

The fuse, must be one of the components on PCB of the IDE right? Or it just look like a fuse ? Search were only suggesting diode or resistor  and both are near the power input , close relationship with  " burn" .

I do know how the cable looks like (definitely not the cable), and I still have access to a desktop that uses it  including floppy disk  , the only problem is that the whole component or part may fail to work because it been abandoned for a decade plus already.

Do something about it before  the whole internet run out of resources   .