IDE to Sata adaptors

[NikolaeVarius]

Long story short, I have a few IDE HDD's that I'm using on a new build that only has SATA ports.

Would it be safe to use cheap adapters from eBay for this purpose, such as these?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-3-5-IDE...812?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43aa635a9c.

If they fail, could they possibly screw up the existing data on the HDD's? Thanks.

 

[Gillbot]

no

they might be ok for temporary but i dont suggest them for long term use.

 

[GoStumpy]

I'm installing one very similar to that one (Bought locally for $19.99) except this one has two SATA connectors, one is to plug a IDE drive into a SATA mobo, and one to plug a SATA drive into an IDE mobo.

They have a seperate power connector to power the adaptor itself... I wouldn't recommend a ebay special, however...

 

[Puffnstuff]

Abit started that trend a number of years ago but discontinued offering them because of corruption issues. With as cheap as new hd's are why not just buy a couple of new sata drives?

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I'm wondering about controller, speed issues. I imagine there could be some sort of controller clash with the mobo? Also, I'm reading that speeds of the HDD can also be reduced. Also, are there any differences between direct converters that go directly on the ports themselves, and PCI adaptors?

Also, could you post the model of the part you bought?

 

[stahlhart]

I would not bet the house that you'll be able to boot the system from an HDD attached through one of those. But if you're just talking about moving data back and forth as a secondary drive you should be okay.

I have two of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PATA-IDE-SA...943?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb98e42d7

...and they work nicely for a pair of SATA optical drives on an older motherboard that doesn't have enough SATA ports to connect them directly. They even support booting from optical media. I first tried connecting them via a PCI SATA adapter, but couldn't get boot support to work.

 

[Soulkeeper]

i've been using the original abit serillel one on an 80GB drive in a server for years now ....
no issues.

I did purchase a syba adapter and it didn't work right however
From this experience, and what i've heard others saying, getting one that works well with your drive and chipset is hit or miss.
Either it'll work or it won't, they are cheap so it won't hurt to try imo

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I would not bet the house that you'll be able to boot the system from an HDD attached through one of those. But if you're just talking about moving data back and forth as a secondary drive you should be okay.

I have two of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PATA-IDE-SA...943?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb98e42d7

...and they work nicely for a pair of SATA optical drives on an older motherboard that doesn't have enough SATA ports to connect them directly. They even support booting from optical media. I first tried connecting them via a PCI SATA adapter, but couldn't get boot support to work.

Yeah, I don't have to boot off them ,only shuffle data. How well do they work. Were there any weird driver or controller issues, and have you noticed anything weird in speed?

 

[stahlhart]

Yeah, I don't have to boot off them ,only shuffle data. How well do they work. Were there any weird driver or controller issues?

I agree with what the other poster said -- if you get one of these, I'd invest in a better one that you might be able to get some prior user feedback on. I have a co-worker who uses one all of the time for doing things like Ghost backups/restores, because we have a lot of older PC-based PLCs in our plant to support that don't have SATA ports.

For the ones I have, I've had good luck both reading from and writing to optical media. It may be an apples-to-oranges comparison between that and connecting an HDD to one, though.

 

[exdeath]

Only reason to use those is to recover data off your old drives and consolidate it to one newer bigger faster drive. Then either build a working Frankenstein computer with them from all your other spare parts and donate a computer or just throw them in the trash. No reason to keep a couple 80 GB IDE spinners.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Only reason to use those is to recover data off your old drives and consolidate it to one newer bigger faster drive. Then either build a working Frankenstein computer with them from all your other spare parts and donate a computer or just throw them in the trash. No reason to keep a couple 80 GB IDE spinners.

It's a set of 120 Gb, 250 gb, and a 80 gb.

I think its pretty decent considering the tripling of current HDD prices.

I AM thinking of simply recovering data and then selling off the drives though. Wonder how much they go for.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's a set of 120 Gb, 250 gb, and a 80 gb.

I think its pretty decent considering the tripling of current HDD prices.

I AM thinking of simply recovering data and then selling off the drives though. Wonder how they go for.

check microcenter.com 's prices.

 

[Gillbot]

Abit started that trend a number of years ago but discontinued offering them because of corruption issues. With as cheap as new hd's are why not just buy a couple of new sata drives?

lol http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2128270/hard-drive-prices-double-thai-floods

 

[bryanl]

Compatibility varies widely by chipset. I never had problems with any based on Marvell chipsets, but an older Sunplus chipset was not reliable with SATA drives (lockup in a few seconds to an hour) and worked only with HDDs, not optical drives, but never versions of the same chipset were compatible with everything.

I haven't had nearly as many problems with USB-IDE bridge chips or with parallel IDE controller cards, and if you have a spare PCI or PCI-E slot, think of getting one of those cards.

 

[Belegost]

If you have a PCI or PCIe slot available it would probably be more effective to get an IDE controller card.

 

[MRGOOCH]

I would not bet the house that you'll be able to boot the system from an HDD attached through one of those. But if you're just talking about moving data back and forth as a secondary drive you should be okay.

I have two of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PATA-IDE-SA...943?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb98e42d7

...and they work nicely for a pair of SATA optical drives on an older motherboard that doesn't have enough SATA ports to connect them directly. They even support booting from optical media. I first tried connecting them via a PCI SATA adapter, but couldn't get boot support to work.

Do you have to set the hard drive to slave before attaching the adapter?

 

[corkyg]

Do you have to set the hard drive to slave before attaching the adapter?

I set mine to CSEL and let the computer sort it out.

 

[ElFenix]

imma get one of these to see just how slow my ppro is with an SSD :laugh:

 

[GoStumpy]

My friend's computer has been running one of these powered adaptors for 3 months now with no problems :thumbsup:

Built his computer 2 weeks after the Flooding, so we had to re-use his 320GB IDE drive for storage and ended up getting him a 120GB SSD as a main drive!

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Just as a quick update, I did buy one of those really cheap ones and they worked great. Not using them as a bootable drive thought, don't trust them to that extent.