SSD for a PATA desktop

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B-2Admirer

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I have an old PATA desktop machine that I would like to upgrade to SSD. Since, as far as I know, native 40-pin PATA SSD drives don't exist, it seems that I have the following options.

1) Buy a 44-pin 2.5'' PATA SSD with 3.5'' mounting brackets and a 44-pin to 40-pin adapter.

2) Buy an "upgrade kit" like OWC Mercury Pro Legacy 3.5" IDE/ATA SSD Internal Drive Kit, which, as far as I understand, contains a SATA SSD, 3.5'' mounting brackets, and a PATA to SATA adapter.

3) Make my own "upgrade kit": buy a SATA SSD and a PATA to SATA adapter like Startech PATA2SATA2 or IDE2SAT separately.

Using a PCI SATA card is not an option, I don't want to waste a PCI slot as long as there are other alternatives.

Right now the third option seems most appropriate, because the makers of the "upgrade kit" apparently very much want to rip off those who for whatever reason still use the machines with PATA interface - the 120GB upgrade kit costs about $45 more than the SSD it seems to contain, and $45 is clearly too much for a PATA to SATA adapter, which retails for $18.50 in addition, sequential read/write for the SSD in the kit is given as 285/275 MB/s, which is an overkill when used with a PATA machine. In other words, there should be cheaper SSDs available that will perform just as fast.

So what I should look for is, probably, a reliable, preferably 3.5'' SSD with a good random read/write, while sequential read/write is not critical. Can anyone suggest a particular model (or some online database where I could look for it myself)? The size should be in the range of 60 to 128 GB.
 
Are you fucking serious? SSD on PATA? If anything that's the "waste" and not the PCI slot. The only viable option is to get a PCI SATA controller card. It isn't a "waste" to use a PCI slot for a controller card. If you can't make the tiny sacrifice of a PCI slot then get forget about running a SSD on an obsolete machine.

I'm honestly trying not to take this as a troll post.
 
What exactly makes you freak out? I happen to own an old machine and it's interesting for me to know how it's going to perform with an SSD. If you can't live with the fact that someone want to connect an SSD to a motherboard with no SATA, you can always commit seppuku. I don't mind at all.

Why would I use a PCI card to connect an SSD when I can do it with a PATA to SATA adapter?

And besides, if you didn't manage to understand it, my question wasn't about the best way to connect an SSD. I was asking which SSDs would be better suited for a limited transfer rate I'm going to have with the ATA-133 interface.
 
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Just how ancient is this machine? The last motherboard I had that didn't have SATA ports was in 2001. I can't imagine using an SSD on a computer that old.
 
OP I've used those industrial 44 pin devices with good luck in the past(buch of thin clients used them as well). As far as the pata to sata adapters I've used them in the other direction and they work ok. I've seen issues with them but generally it isn't a big issue.

blitzkommando said:
Just how ancient is this machine? The last motherboard I had that didn't have SATA ports was in 2001. I can't imagine using an SSD on a computer that old.
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For one think industrial devices that may not have sata.
 
OP mentioned he did have an available PCI slot in which an SATA controller card could be used. PATA is just too much of a bottleneck for an SSD to be worth the time, effort and money.
 
GigabyteZ said:
OP mentioned he did have an available PCI slot in which an SATA controller card could be used. PATA is just too much of a bottleneck for an SSD to be worth the time, effort and money.
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PATA banwidth limit is exactly that of PCI in most implementations, i. e. 133 MB/s.

blitzkommando said:
Just how ancient is this machine? The last motherboard I had that didn't have SATA ports was in 2001. I can't imagine using an SSD on a computer that old.
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Why would the age matter? Right now it's definitely bottlenecked by HDD performance, so I want to try SSD. Buying an SSD itself isn't a waste of money, since, if I choose to, I can use it with a SATA board afterwards. The adapter cost $15..20, no big deal.

swatbat said:
OP I've used those industrial 44 pin devices with good luck in the past(buch of thin clients used them as well). As far as the pata to sata adapters I've used them in the other direction and they work ok. I've seen issues with them but generally it isn't a big issue.
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Yes, but those native PATA SSDs seem overpriced. It's, like I said, probably due to vendors wanting to rip off those who still needs them. As to the adapters, some of them have many issues, but those form Startech/Addonics generally seem to work very well, at least with SSDs. I would not want to use any adapter with an optical drive, though, as there much more things that could go wrong, e. g. a firmware update.
 
I just tried a Rosewill RC-A-SATA-IDE bridge adapter (based on a Marvell 88SA8052) with a OCZ Vertex2 (60G) as a quick test on a Linux Live boot. R/W xfer tested 95 MB/s. I was expecting ~125, but hdparm -I showed a UDMA5 connection. I didn't investigate that further (note that Marvell states the 88SA8052 as "PATA 133"). The (4KB) random access time tested at a respectable 0.25 ms.
 
Access times does not have much to do with the connection time, and has everything to do with the design of the drive itself. An SSD should have similar access times regardless of connection type.

What the connection type does bottleneck is transfer speeds.
 
B-2Admirer said:
Is it equal to what the drive would show over a native SATA connection?
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Of course not; there's no free lunch :).

On a motherboard SATA II port (ICH9R sb), the same test yields 0.17 ms. ~45% added overhead for the PATA bridge; but real-time-wise, it is only an additional 80 microseconds per access. For perspective, let's remember that a fast PATA drive, even short-stroked to ~60GB, is 10 millisec. (40!! times slower than the SSD/PATA I tested). You will appreciate the improvement; and you can use a now-inexpensive first-gen SSD.
 
Its not like its our money being spent, if he wants to do it, no biggy. Personally, I wouldnt keep anything even near that old, but he could re-use the SSD, so not a total loss.

If the OP has extra pci slots that are not being used, that might be the easiest.
 
This is very [H] !

How does Win 95 work with SSD?
:eek:

Do you want some old p4s with SATA motherboards ?
Free ?
 
B-2Admirer said:
Using a PCI SATA card is not an option, I don't want to waste a PCI slot as long as there are other alternatives.
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huh :confused: in a machine this old, what else could you possibly consider to put in the pci slot? And judging by your wording, there are several free PCI slots as it is.

buy a SATA card. done. move on. unless you're trying to outfit some old school sparc server or something...

spend the $100 and get a new board+processor+ram that has SATA built in. probably end up costing the same in the end.

edit. I feel like i've taken this post too seriously and trolled.
 
Can always buy a CF card and adapter. 3.5" IDE SSDs exist but they're old and reserved for industrial applications and therefore very expensive.
 
ToddW2 said:
This is very [H] !

How does Win 95 work with SSD?
:eek:

Do you want some old p4s with SATA motherboards ?
Free ?
Click to expand...
What was it, Salvation Army on a HW forum?
As amazing as it sounds, I'd rather use win95 than win8, if I were forced to choose, even though I never used any of those and not going to. At least as long as MS-DOS is availabe :D

saranya said:
huh :confused: in a machine this old, what else could you possibly consider to put in the pci slot?
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Mmmm, a spam filter for this forum, perhaps :cool: This is an ancient machine, you know, and its CPU can only take so much :rolleyes:
 
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If you're going to leave the SSD in the older PC for most of its life you might as well go with the cheapest, reliable one you can get (wouldn't worry about the speed). Also, if you have only one device you might as well go with the adapter - it would be easier to set it up as a boot drive (as in no extra effort required) vs. using a PCI controller card - which oftentimes needs a floppy to install the drivers during the Windows installation. Plus the adapter shouldn't tax the CPU at all while a PCI SATA controller card and its drivers might (and that may be an issue with an old CPU that needs all the help it can get).

I was actually kicking around the idea of doing this will an old nForce2 PC I have without SATA - just for shits and giggles.
 
Jeffredo said:
If you're going to leave the SSD in the older PC for most of its life you might as well go with the cheapest, reliable one you can get (wouldn't worry about the speed). Also, if you have only one device you might as well go with the adapter - it would be easier to set it up as a boot drive (as in no extra effort required) vs. using a PCI controller card - which oftentimes needs a floppy to install the drivers during the Windows installation. Plus the adapter shouldn't tax the CPU at all while a PCI SATA controller card and its drivers might (and that may be an issue with an old CPU that needs all the help it can get).

I was actually kicking around the idea of doing this will an old nForce2 PC I have without SATA - just for shits and giggles.
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Well, although you didn't tell me anything new, it was nice to hear someone who speaks reasonably after all those metric tons of BS that I received here. This whole thing is not a high priority to me, but if and when I do it I'll post the result here.
 
I have had best luck with the PATA-SATA adapters, lots of issues booting off a PCI slot.

An SSD is the best upgrade available for an honored old machine.

Don't listen to the scrappers.
 
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