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USB IDE adapters

GotNoRice

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I got a new case with capacity for additional hard drives vs. my old case but I’m out of IDE ports. I have about 4 extra IDE drives that I’d love to throw in there since they are basically just laying around.

Could I pick up a few of something like these and use them for internal drives?: http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-To-IDE-...4QQihZ018QQcategoryZ41994QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I’m not sure how much slower the drives would be via the USB adapters but I really only need the drives to be fast enough to stream stuff like music and video files from. I’m mainly concerned about stuff like stability, if the adapters will likely support large IDE drives or not, etc.

Does this seem do-able or is this a bad idea?
 
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Even "good" USB2.0-IDE adapters are speed limited to ~24MB/s by the interface. If you HDDs are from the late 90's they may not be limited.
 
1. Keep in mind, that doesn't look like it comes with a power adapter, so you'll need to find a way to power the drive.

2. As (or more) important, is the fact that those things are garbage. I had one that lasted less than a month. It was great while it worked, but I believe one of the internal connections failed, as the drive receives power, but isn't detected by Windows when the USB connector is plugged in.
 
Gambit said:
1. Keep in mind, that doesn't look like it comes with a power adapter, so you'll need to find a way to power the drive.

2. As (or more) important, is the fact that those things are garbage. I had one that lasted less than a month. It was great while it worked, but I believe one of the internal connections failed, as the drive receives power, but isn't detected by Windows when the USB connector is plugged in.

I'll agree they aren't made the best, but I've had (what looks to be) this exact one for 6+ months and its been working fine. I use it mainly for hooking laptop hard drives up, but it does a darn good job for what it is.

 
Well, I saw them on Newegg a while ago. I had read the reviews at the time, which weren't all positive and thought to myself "Nah, these people are probably going nuts with these things... abusing them or something. That won't happen to me"

I can tell ya, I wasn't hard on mine... after a while it just started intermittenly connecting. Now I don't think it really works at all.
 
Gambit said:
1. Keep in mind, that doesn't look like it comes with a power adapter, so you'll need to find a way to power the drive.

Not going to be a problem as my only real limitation is my lack of IDE ports, these drives are still going to be internal and I have plenty of spare molex plugs.

Not sure about the reliability problems, but it would pretty much be "Set and forget" since I'd be using it for internal drives.
 
ryan_975 said:
Why not get a PCI IDE controller like this one.

or a PCI-e IDE controller like this one.


My motherboard already has 4 PCI cards with the 5th PCI slot being covered by my GPU heatsink. I have no PCIe slots. I have like 10 PCI IDE cards laying around, if only it was that simple :(
 
GotNoRice said:
My motherboard already has 4 PCI cards with the 5th PCI slot being covered by my GPU heatsink. I have no PCIe slots. I have like 10 PCI IDE cards laying around, if only it was that simple :(

ahh, see you didn't mention that. :D. What in the world are you using four PCI slot for?
 
ryan_975 said:
ahh, see you didn't mention that. :D. What in the world are you using four PCI slot for?

SCSI Controller, PhysX PPU, Audigy2ZS + EMU 0404 soundcard combo.
 
loose the PPU youll never need it. :D

What about one of those ribbon cable PCI risers. You might be able to run it around the HSF and mount the card somewhere.
 
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