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IDE to Laptop (USB) adapter

Z

ziloo

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
990
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in the basement
Hello Folks,

I want your recommendations for an IDE to USB adapter,
so that I can get data from my old IDE HD drive into
my laptop. Are they reliable and worth the money?

Thank You

ziloo :mrgreen:
 
eBay and Amazon marketplaces are littered with cheap USB to IDE adaptors, the one I use looks like this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digiflex-S...p/B004JO1Z52/ref=psdc_430470031_t1_B009C6O1BM

I bought mine a few years ago, it's okay, works with most drives.

The only drive that it didn't work with that is in my collection is a Seagate ST3491A, which I think is due to the adaptor trying to use the highest PIO4 timing that is not supported.
 
I have several USB-IDE enclosures and all seem to work fairly well. I can't exactly recommend them by brand since the brands involved are defunct; two were house brands at Radio Shack. I don't know what the current selection is like since I last purchased one about a decade ago.

Limitations of the adapter chip sets are that they will not work with very early IDE drives, nor with XT attachment drives, nor with drives using a DDO.
 
External 3.5" IDE HDD adapters to USB that I've used were dirt cheap all seem to work well. As far as 5" IDE adapters I've only used one or two and can't recall the brands since not common to use them any more. Just be sure it has a decent power supply. I think the real problem now would be to find one that isn't SATA.
 
Same here, Don. The ones I'm thinking of are black with 40 pin PATA and 44 pin 2mm PATA for laptop, as well as SATA and a USB-A at the end of a cable. I've used them with hard drives and CD drives. Cheap.
 
USB adapters suck for older HDs that predate the ATA spec (not recognised). Generally those that are under 500mb that you would need to enter the head and cylinder info instead of auto detect on a PC.

As far as if they are worth it, most of the cheap ebay cables work fine on supported drives at USB 1.x speeds (slowish). The only issue is that some power heavy laptops drives need the adapters that plug into 2 usb ports for power and not the single ended ones.
 
Most modern cheap IDE to USB adapters use JMicron controllers. They're basically the Realtek of the storage realm, they're cheap, readily available and have drivers for almost every OS. They're very compatible with basically all but the oldest ATA drives. The only downside to them is that the cheapest JMicron controllers are USB 2.0 only, thus can be limiting to drive speeds for later ATA-66+ speeds.

I haven't seen any USB 3.0 JMicron controllers out in the wild, but I'm sure they exist.
 
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