Turning an IDE into SATA??

[grouch]

Hey all,
I was browsing ebay for hard drives and came across this auction for an IDE to SATA converter. Claims that it converts any IDE hard drive to SATA, and has ports for SATA data cable and SATA power cable.
Is this just a scam?? Like isn't the data transfer rate controlled by the hard drive itself, and not dependant entirely on the cable??
Or would it be just a hard drive connected via SATA interface but speed of an IDE??

Thanks.

[Ian]

No, it's not a scam. It's just an IDE to SATA converter. Just keep in mind that they don't work with all motherboard chipsets.

[CowboySlim]

Hey Grouch, which one are you talking about? There are two of which I am aware, Rockethead 100 and Addonics. I bought the latter and it showed up at the door today, still in the box.

I'm going to try it shortly - be back later tonight.

Slim

[CowboySlim]

OK, here's the deal. I got this Addonics ADIDESA. Works fine on a hard drive. Can't do a normal boot when used on an optical drive, Toshiba SD-M1712 DVD-ROM. However, will boot into safe mode. Windows XP Home SP2 and Intel D865GBFL.

Slim

[pranav81]

Technically there should be no problem and you should be able to boot into Windows normally when the converter is connected to a optical drive.

Slim,did you try that converter on any other computer?


::Pranav::

[LoneWolf]

No, it's not a scam. It's just an IDE to SATA converter. Just keep in mind that they don't work with all motherboard chipsets.

To further specify, the ones I have found so far only work with Silicon Image chipsets. It would seem the converters use some IC's from Silicon Image and need SI on the mainboard to work...

Rather than deal with that, I plan to ditch my IDE drives and get two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB SATA's with some funds received at Christmas.

[CowboySlim]

No, did not try on another computer. However, BIOS did recognize optical drive and I could read from a CD in that drive in the SAFE mode.

The Addonics website does have a disclaimer that it may only work on ATAPI drives with Silicon Image chipsets.

Slim

[rmunde]

My previous Abit IC7-Max 3 board would only recognize ide drives attached to Abit adapters- others would not work. Keep in mind that you gain nothing in performance by attaching an IDE drive to a SATA controller.

[arklab]

I've tried two, on both HD's and DVD burners - on several mobos.

Both worked, but REQUIRED the drive jumper to be set to MASTER.
Just leaving the jumper off (which is suposed to select Master), or using Cable Select really messed up these converters.