Question IDE controller

jamesdsimone · Nov 19, 2024

Anyone have any experience with IDE controllers? I have a bunch of IDE DVD drives and hard drives. I want to be able to use them in one of my HP workstations. I bought these converters and they did not work. Tried both of them in 2 different computers and with multiple drives.

https://www.newegg.com/riitop-35ide2sata-mndl-ide-to-sata/p/35G-0009-00054?Item=9SIA6V89YW2632

Maybe this?

https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-010M-000M5?Item=9SIAYT8H761274

tcsenter · Nov 19, 2024

You already tried "both" things you have linked or just both of the two PCI-E x1 cards you purchased? Are the cards (no drives connected) installed/reported correctly in Device Manager? The jumper on the IDE drives set to master? How about trying slave IDE position? Or Cable Select position? I would only connect a single IDE drive at a time, until proven to work.

jamesdsimone · Nov 19, 2024

tcsenter said:
You already tried "both" things you have linked or just both of the two PCI-E x1 cards you purchased? Are the cards (no drives connected) installed/reported correctly in Device Manager? The jumper on the IDE drives set to master? How about trying slave IDE position? Or Cable Select position? I would only connect a single IDE drive at a time, until proven to work.

I tried the first one. It was a 2 pack so made sure one wasn't bad. I haven't tried the second one. I was just looking for input before I get another solution.

fzabkar · Nov 19, 2024

Did you try the HDDs or just the DVDs? The former is an ATA device, the latter is ATAPI.

What is the ID of the IDE-SATA bridge IC under the QC sticker?

Did you configure each DVD/HDD as a master?

jamesdsimone · Nov 20, 2024

fzabkar said:
Did you try the HDDs or just the DVDs? The former is an ATA device, the latter is ATAPI.

What is the ID of the IDE-SATA bridge IC under the QC sticker?

Did you configure each DVD/HDD as a master?

I tried both HDD and DVD drives. I tried master and cable select.

tcsenter · Nov 20, 2024

Can you hear the drives spin up, normal sounding?

Seba · Nov 20, 2024

You can buy a SATA DVD Writer for about the same price as those adapters.

As for IDE HDDs, if the purpose is to access data stored on them, better look for an old external USB rack for 3.5" IDE hard disk drives.

In case you plan to use those in a "modern" PC, the low capacity and slow speed of IDE HDDs is not worth the hassle in my opinion.

fzabkar · Nov 20, 2024

Did your adaptor look like this one?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003378786929.html

Have a good look at the photos. I'm wondering if this is the worst marketing fail I've ever seen.

jamesdsimone · Nov 20, 2024

tcsenter said:
Can you hear the drives spin up, normal sounding?

The DVD drive seems to get power but no they don't spin up or show up as drives.

fzabkar · Nov 20, 2024

jamesdsimone said:
The DVD drive seems to get power but no they don't spin up or show up as drives.

I'm wondering whether the power cable has been wired correctly. Do you have a multimeter?

tcsenter · Nov 20, 2024

jamesdsimone said:
The DVD drive seems to get power but no they don't spin up or show up as drives.

Well I meant the HDD. Opticals aren't going to spin up (more than a couple hundred RPM initially) unless media is inserted. But all these mechanical drives do have a familiar procession of small sounds that occur when they are initialized, do their own POST/BIST, etc.

bigboxes · Nov 20, 2024

If you just want to get the data off of the drives, just use a USB HDD enclosure for PATA drives. I still saved a few of mine for just such an emergency. I have a lot of old IDE drives. That's how I started. Learning what Master/Slave was. Again, I'd recommend just using a USB HDD enclosure for PATA drives. Just swap each drive out until you find out they're good or not. And recovering whatever data you can. Other than that, I'd retire those drives and only use them in a retro machine. As for the DVD drive, I'd just get cheap SATA DVD drive. I hoard way too many IDE drives. I even have a working Deathstar.

Soulkeeper · Saturday at 11:25 PM

I tried the ide to sata and sata to ide adapater years ago with some success.
You will likely need to set the jumper to master or cs on the drives, look into that, I can't remember for sure.
Also I believe there could be weird quirks with AHCI and ATAPI.
Maybe you'll need to set some kinda "legacy" setting in the bios.

tcsenter · Sunday at 9:00 AM

You got me inspired to tackle a similar job I have some IDE HDDs that will not read through a USB external enclosure. I had them stored so long I don't even know what is on there, if I want any of the data.

I have HighPoint Rocket 100 IDE/ATA PCI card from 2003 (not "RocketRAID" 100, but it does support software RAID). Threw together a PC using motherboard with Intel G45/ICH10, LGA 775 Core2Duo E8500, 4GB DDR2, 120GB SSD, installed Windows 7 PRO 32-bit flavor because the drivers for this card are from 2004, not designed/tested for any 64-bit OS. The drivers are actually for Windows XP but Windows 7 particularly 32-bit could work with almost any XP drivers.

Card is recognized, installed drivers, no problem reported with resource assignment. I shut down and connect one of the drives, everything looks good during POST and the controller OPROM recognizes the drive. System is booting from the correct drive (SSD with Windows 7), but hangs midway through boot with no activity. Let is sit for 10 minutes, nothing. Powered off, unplugged IDE drive, system boots fine. But attach it again, hangs at the same point.

So I've got a couple more motherboards here with PCI slots, older ones than Intel G45, from 2003 ~ 2005, that also have onboard IDE/PATA slots. Going to try with Windows XP instead of 7. WEEEEEE!!!

jamesdsimone · Sunday at 12:09 PM

tcsenter said:
So I've got a couple more motherboards here with PCI slots, older ones than Intel G45, from 2003 ~ 2005, that also have onboard IDE/PATA slots. Going to try with Windows XP instead of 7. WEEEEEE!!!

Did you try a live LInux boot? I just though of that. I have a IDE enclosure with removable racks that I want to install it in one of my computers so I can easily access my IDE drives. I have a guy who is in the junk business and he always brings me piles of random computer stuff including hard drives.

tcsenter · Sunday at 5:12 PM

I did try Ubuntu Live an older 14.04.6 LTS, it hung while booting as well.

tcsenter · Sunday at 7:38 PM

OK this is getting fun! Old mobo/CPU means old display adapter (AGP), with no HDMI or DisplayPort, which means having to change the cable on my new monitor (thankfully it does have VGA output and I have a VGA cable). Some dusty boxes are getting gone through today!

jamesdsimone · Sunday at 9:01 PM

tcsenter said:
OK this is getting fun! Old mobo/CPU means old display adapter (AGP), with no HDMI or DisplayPort, which means having to change the cable on my new monitor (thankfully it does have VGA output and I have a VGA cable). Some dusty boxes are getting gone through today!

It is about having fun getting things to work. I have had good success with cast off workstations. I am planning on using one of my 2 z420's for the IDE setup. I have some VGA to DVI adapters that work well though fewer video cards have DVI connectors. I have a pile of IDE drives to go through and having to swap out drives in a single drive enclosure is not going to cut it. Decided to try the add in card I posted before. It's a 12 dollar chance but easier than messing with the adapters I have. I swear I tried all the jumper settings master, slave, single drive and CS.

tcsenter · Monday at 2:37 AM

I think I remember why I have been 'forgetting' about this project for so long. The mobo I am using is Socket A VIA KT600 from ECS. It has the usual two IDE ports and two SATA 150 ports. I'm trying to install to SATA drive (with SATA compatibility jumper installed). There is SUPPOSED to be an option in BIOS to configure the SATA controller mode IDE/ATA or RAID. But it is absent, which means it is stuck in whatever mode is default.

I can't get W7 SP1 installed from USB drive for anything. Tried in-box drivers and also supplying the drivers on a floppy. Initial install phase appears to complete successfully, but on reboot, after POST, it just sits there in blank screen.

IIRC this is because of the way BIOS implements boot support for USB drives, or the way that Rufus is formatting the USB drive. The BIOS sees it as "USB Hard Drive" i.e. a fixed disk, not removable. Or whatever, I remember people dealing with this crap back when bootable USB flash drivers first became a thing, having to try different ways of partitioning the USB drive with different boot record types.

So I've gone all the way legacy, using an IDE/ATA hard disk for installation, AND an ATAPI optical DVD drive! Creating DVD install media on another PC as I type. 😃😆🤣

tcsenter · Monday at 5:54 AM

OK scratch that bit about booting USB flash drives. The verdict is: these SATA ports are NOT bootable. They are only for storage, no booting from.

THAT is why I couldn't get it to work. Didn't dawn on me until I couldn't get the bootable DVD media to load via SATA DVD drive - 'no valid boot device found'. It makes sense since there is no device reporting for the SATA ports at all in BIOS setup, nothing connected to them is selectable from boot order/priority options, etc.

Now that I am having my memory joggled, I recall a number of these boards with early implementations of SATA 150 were thusly configured, no boot support through the integrated SATA (unless another SATA controller chip). Would have been nice for the manual to mention it (or my memory to cooperate) but nothing.

Up and running! Now to get this HighPoint card working....

tcsenter · 2024-11-26T19:33:43-0500

Well out of 13 - 3.5" drives, four had data on them, none that I wanted to keep. Funnily, three of those had my post-it notes indicating they were empty/formatted. lol I don't know what happened there maybe I meant 'ready' to format. The eldest drive was a Quantum Fireball 4.3GB that squealed so loudly when powered up that it startled me (and the dog), like the bearing was going to seize up. But went quiet after about three seconds and worked fine, enough for me to check it out.

The stash of IDE/PATA (ignore the 2.5" photobombers):

I'm keeping five (no more!) of the newest drives > 60GB. The rest are going to ewaste. Never did get around to using the HighPoint card. I just used the mobo ports.

jamesdsimone · 2024-11-26T23:04:06-0500

tcsenter said:
I'm keeping five (no more!) of the newest drives > 60GB. The rest are going to ewaste. Never did get around to using the HighPoint card. I just used the mobo ports.

I usually keep the 80Gb and larger.

Question IDE controller

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