I just bought a Dell which came with a SATA hard-drive. I want to put
my old IDE hard drive into it as a secondary drive, but the connections
don't match. Do I need to get a simple IDE-SATA converter (like the one
at
http://www.computervideogear.com/sata/serial-ata-ide-converter.htm)
and just plug it in, or are things more complicated than that? Thanks
In theory yes. Ive never tried one on a DELL and Ive never tried that
converter.
Ive had great success with this one and this place usually has the
cheapest prices. Im talking about the one for $14 here.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&style=
This one in particular
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&style=
They have a cheaper one for $9 which one user seems to say works but
he gave it a low rating because according to him it came with a bad
cable and it wouldnt fit in his case. Frankly Im surprised at that
price it came with a cable. The one above that I got was $14 and it
didnt come with one. With a cable they sell the same thing for $17. I
also dont understand what he means when he says it doesnt fit in his
case in terms of width. Width wise these things are TINY.
And most of the converters at other sites dont come with a cable and
its usually 20-30 or more.
The one I got is enclosed in a clear case. The cheap one is like many
-- just an exposed circuit board stuck on the back of the HD.
The one I got Ive used on a nforce2 board and its worked fine. Ive
taken both over to my nforce4 board and its still fine. Ive used it on
8-9 HDs no problems. Ive seen a few posts on other brands of
converters that say they had problems so Im not saying any of these
converters work for everybody. A few boards and HDs may be
incompatible but Ive never had problems with mine like that.
What Ive had problems are ---- the converters sticking out way off the
back of the HD and the weight the cables stuck on the converters tend
to weigh it down a little and it tends to sag. This can come loose if
you arent careful. These plugs that go into the PATA IDE HD --- they
have no notch on the top and the size is smaller than the input on the
HD which is weird. So you can actually plug them in wrong - one pin
over to the left or right too much. This can cause bizarre errors with
your HD. You just have to look carefully when you plug it in. These
use floppy power plugs. If you dont have an extra one you need to buy
an adaptor for the power plug. This usually isnt a problem with the
avg PC if you use only ONE converter cause most come with two flioppy
power plugs so if you use one floppy you have an extra. I use two
converters so I dont use a floppy and those floppy power adaptors dont
exist in my region and shipping is high.
The converter itself needs a floppy power cable, sata cable. The HD
still needs a regular power cable.
The last problem --- in my case my HDs sit sideways so the extra
length of the sata cable plus the converter makes the side panel hard
to fit on and the pressure actually damaged the sata cable end. Most
of these problems probably wont happen with you and are fairly easy to
avoid. These converters Ive been using have worked amazingly well over
a year in two different systems but you do have to watch for the
looseness of fit, the extra length at the back of the HD -- whether
that will cause any problems and of course its always possible they
might be incompatible with your DELL.
