IDE and SATA hard drive adapters

[ef37a]

I won't piggy-back on a similar thread but I find I have a need to read the old hard drives I have kept for over a decade.

There are of course many HDD adaptors on the web but I wondered if anyone had any experience of a specific make that they could recommend?
And, just a thought, if a drive came out of an XP machine would I still be able to read it on W10 or W7?

Dave.

[Matt Houghton]

Windows shouldn't be too choosy. Assuming they still spin that is! Gets tricker when you want to use SATA on older devices that only have IDE connections. Eg Alesis HD24.But let's not go down that rabbit hole. When on Win 7, I used one roughly like this one on eBay, in which you mount the drives vertically. It's worked just fine.

[DGL.]

Had a few, both simple SATA USB cable and one of the vertical docks, both worked fine. Ones that support USB SCSI? mode are supposedly faster but probably won't matter for IDE.

[ef37a]

Thanks chaps, I have seen one of those red docks with SD card slots which could be handy so I shall go for one of those.

Dave.

[James Perrett]

Startech are one of the safest brands to go for if you want an enclosure for an old HDD. That said, I have an unbranded IDE/SATA enclosure with 5 stars across the front which works fine as a USB to IDE adaptor. You need an E-Sata connector on your computer if you want to use Sata drives with this enclosure.

[ef37a]

Startech are one of the safest brands to go for if you want an enclosure for an old HDD. That said, I have an unbranded IDE/SATA enclosure with 5 stars across the front which works fine as a USB to IDE adaptor. You need an E-Sata connector on your computer if you want to use Sata drives with this enclosure.

Aha! Thank you James, my Lenovo does have a port marked "E-Sata" is that the same connector as on the back of Sata drives? Hope so because I have lots of those. My old HP g6 does not have E-Sata but no matter.

Dave.

[merlyn]

I've used an internal adapter card like this. It works in both directions -- you can use SATA drives on a motherboard with only IDE, or IDE drives on a motherboard with only SATA.

[James Perrett]

Aha! Thank you James, my Lenovo does have a port marked "E-Sata" is that the same connector as on the back of Sata drives? Hope so because I have lots of those. My old HP g6 does not have E-Sata but no matter.

I think that electrically they are the same but they are physically different so that the e-Sata connector is more rugged than the internal Sata connector.

[ef37a]

Startech do an adapter cable for a fiver so if one does not come with the dock, no biggy.

A quick shufti shows I don't have any gash Sata drives but one wants to be fully equipped doesn't one?

Dave.

[James Perrett]

A quick shufti shows I don't have any gash Sata drives but one wants to be fully equipped doesn't one?

In that case you may find that you never actually use the E-Sata cables. I don't think the connectors are fitted to any modern computers.