Do SATA to USB adapters work?

[Wag]

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-.../dp/B001OORMVQ

I'm talking about one of those. I have some hot-swap bays and I want to be able to hook my harddrives and DVD-Rom to a media player's USB port.

Will they work with 2TB HDs (and over?).

 

[A5]

I have something similar at work and it seems to work OK. Speeds aren't amazing though.

 

[ElFenix]

to a media player? maybe not. do the specifications say it'll take USB hard drives?

 

[Wag]

to a media player? maybe not. do the specifications say it'll take USB hard drives?

Yep. The specs say USB hard drives and DVD/Blu-Ray Roms, etc, etc. As long as the drives are powered I don't see why it wouldn't work. You don't need incredibly fast speeds to stream HD anyways. From what I've read those powered SATA ports built into some recent media players are just powered internal USB-SATA ports.

I'm mostly curious if those adapters will be OK with the 2TB NTFS and larger SATA drives.

 

[wirednuts]

to avoid confusion, these adapters take any sata or ide drive and make it possible to just plug that drive right into a usb port for a whopping 10/MB a sec speeds.

but they do work. i like them because it makes a quick external drive out of any crap you have laying around.

i wouldnt be surprised if DVD roms have issues with these though... even the IDE to SATA adapters didnt like optical drives.

 

[Wag]

Hmm. If it's that slow I wonder how it would do with a higher-bitrate HD stream? (if it works at all)

 

[zuffy]

USB 2.0 can sustain 30MB/s. Not sure where the 10MB/s comes from. I have the WDC media player with a USB 2.0 HDD. Absolutely no problem playing HD contents.

 

[greenhawk]

Hmm. If it's that slow I wonder how it would do with a higher-bitrate HD stream? (if it works at all)

proberly be the same or similar to the media player playing from a flash drive.

Though a bigger issue is that a lot of cheap media players still do not reconize NTFS, so FAT32 is still needed. That can effect the use of large drives (2TB+).

 

[Gillbot]

I have one, I use it for pulling data off in a pinch, otherwise they are too slow to be useful otherwise. If I need to pull a lot of data, I put the drive into my PC.

 

[Wag]

I'll be using it strictly for streaming only, with no writing so I think it will work.

 

[RU482]

n/m

 

[wirednuts]

USB 2.0 can sustain 30MB/s. Not sure where the 10MB/s comes from. I have the WDC media player with a USB 2.0 HDD. Absolutely no problem playing HD contents.

cheap adapters. but they do work

 

[mv2devnull]

to avoid confusion, these adapters take any sata or ide drive and make it possible to just plug that drive right into a usb port ...

Every "External USB HDD" has such adapter in it. Probably of same quality too.

IME, (passive cooled) external drives can get a bit hot.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I have one, I use it for pulling data off in a pinch, otherwise they are too slow to be useful otherwise. If I need to pull a lot of data, I put the drive into my PC.

Yup, great in a pinch. Otherwise, let it be.

 

[code65536]

I have one of those. It's useful as a portable tool (e.g., going to help someone get data off of a HDD, I can pack thing along easily). Don't expect great performance. Mine was a bit finicky (it would randomly disconnect at times when using it to hook up a DVD burner, though I never had issues with hard drives). But it works. And it's useful. But I wouldn't use it for a permanent setup (it's far too ugly-looking for that anyways).

 

[Wag]

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Unlimte.../dp/B001MYPI8M

OK, I bought one of these off Amazon resellers and it came without a SLIM DVD-Rom SATA cable. I assume I need to buy one of those?

 

[boochi]

If everything that was pictured in the first post ad was there then no. I see a SATA power and Data cable.

 

[Elixer]

My sis got one of those sata ->usb adapters for her laptop drive, and it was junk. It only worked for really small files, anything over 10MB, and tons of errors.

It was a infosafe unit from officemax, Item #: 21805450 Manufacturer #: SAT2510BU2, cheap, plastic USB powered junk.

 

[Wag]

If everything that was pictured in the first post ad was there then no. I see a SATA power and Data cable.

Yes, a SATA and power cable came, but only for standard sized drives, not for notebook/SLIM SATA which use a smaller power connector.

 

[boochi]

That is odd, the WD Scorpio I just bought works fine with standard size connectors.

 

[ch33zw1z]

That is odd, the WD Scorpio I just bought works fine with standard size connectors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Power_connectors

I've only seen the standard power connectors, but there are others to be aware of.