sata to usb question

seems to be many of these available which surprised me. guess almost any adapter needed is out there.

would appreciate opinions on the 2 links. has anyone used these adapters and if so what do you think. getting more sata drives failing and i want an easy way to connect an sata drive to my ide system for hopefully saving of data from the sata drive.

first link is a combo ability to connect not only an sata to usb but also any 2.5 - 3.5 inch drives to a usb port on an ide system or any system for that matter.

second link is just sata to usb.

am sure someone has used these for their clients so would appreciate an opinion. thank you a head of time.....greg

http://www.adaptergear.com/productdetails1.cfm?sku=USBG-U2IDES1&cats=99511&catid=171&CAT=171

http://www.sataadapter.com/

 

I'm close to something like this.

I have an external HD Case (from newegg) that i'm using to house a SATA HD.
The connection is not a USB2.0 tho. I have a SATA plugin connection (like a
normal plugin board connection). This arrangement goes from the external
case to the back of the tower then to the MB SATA connection. In other
words a true SATA only with an external connection.

Probably you need to look at the speed difference between SATA and USB2.
The slowest speed will determine your transfer rate. So Picking the fastest
transfer rate would seem the most logical to me.

savagcl

 

am trying to connect to a non sata machine thats why i need the usb part. those links say you can take a sata drive and hock up using usb which in essence should be able to connect to my non-sata system.

 

Should be interesting to hear about the results of your hookup......
I'm going to assume the CoolGear has some sort of controller built in for the
SATA to USB2conversion.....

Sorry i didnt understand what you are trying to accomplish.

savagcl

 

yea, thats one of the things im wondering about also. thats why i hope someone has tried one of those devices to know if they actually work. they are on the expensive side so dont want to buy unless someone has experience with them.

 

Greg, from your previous posts it seems that you want to use the SATA adapter to diagnose drives with problems. This may or may not work using the adapter. Some diagnostics work outside of Windows (boot disk) and unless the computer's BIOS had USB drivers I doubt it could be seen (some have boot to USB, but you want to boot to the diagnostics disk then diagnose using USB and the SATA controllers).

You may want to consider a PCI SATA contoller card. If these run like SCSI cards it may need drivers for the card and special utilities for working outside of Windows. Check the SATA controller manufacturer's websites (eg. Promise, HiPoint(sp?) and maybe Adaptec, etc)

Matt

 

mattman

no what i really want to be able to do is connect an sata drive i am working to get the data off using my ide system. if i can plug a usb connector in my ide system that is attached to a sata drive it seems like an easy way of moving data from sata to my backup machine.

did you look at those links ??? whats your opinion ???

have not had any luck with the sata adapter that hocks up to one of my ide ribbons. my system both times i have tried would not even boot up. kept telling me no bootable device or it needs the system disk and i had the adapter set for the drive to be a slave. so trying to find another easy way of connecting an sata drive to my ide backup system.

 

If all you need to do is get data off the SATA drive- it would be a lot cheaper
to find a friend with a SATA capable system, plug your hd to it and just copy
the data you want to a cd. Then read the cd in your system....

It would sure beat going to all that expense for a one-time shot.

savagcl

 

this is not a one time thing for me. this is what i do for a living. i have a computer business so these are things i will need in the future. ive done a thousand ide drives in the past 25 years but satas are relatively new and i am just starting to see some of them crashing.

 

OK, forget what i said about cheaper.

As i mentioned, i have an external SATA to SATA on MB but have no
experience about the 2 devices you are researching.

Sorry i couldnt have been more help.

savagcl

 

It appears that you will probably be working with a suspect drive to begin with. Connecting through the USB would mean that you would be trying to see information on a drive through 1) a SATA controller, 2) a USB controller, then I think it would go through the IDE controller so you could see it as one of your "drives ". What I am saying is that it may work if the drive was blank and you "set it up" to run that way. Trying to look at data that way with a drive that is not working correctly and has been "set-up" on a different machine I think may be just about impossible.

If the drive runs OK...it spins up, there is no "clunking" or "ticking" and is seen by the BIOS, then the problem will be in the boot sector and that could mean any number of causes itself.

Although I don't have any SATA drives, the motherboards I have need SATA drivers installed. I don't know if a Promise SATA controller will read a drive with HiPoint drivers installed or maybe you could if you overwrite the drivers (these are not Windows drivers, they are written to the boot sector). Somehow I don't think these drives will "pop up" in the drive list the way IDE drives do.

With a PCI SATA card you may be able to overwrite the original drivers.

You may need to do some research on analyzing SATA drives and the way they are set up, then make a decision on which adapter could be used.

My feeling is that the USB adapters may work setting up a blank drive, but may not work trying to read one that is out of another computer.

Matt

 

mattman

interesting. the 2 times i have used the adapter that you pointed me to back in dec 04 could not see the sata drive in fact it caused my ide system to not even boot up like i mentioned before. still dont understand that.

i have an sata machine that i have sitting around gathering dust just in case my main system dies in which case i can bring the backup system up and running in a matter of maybe an hour. system though has sata connectors i am still using ide in that system.

sata's are a little weird but need to try something on the ones i get that have failed for whatever reason to see if i can get any data off. with ide unless track 0 has died i can 99% of the time set as slave and get data off it but not working the same with these satas.

 

Hi, Gene.
That's what I have also. And it should solve your problem. It's no trouble to add a sata drive to that machine, even if you have to temporarily disconnect a drive to make a connection available. Do it all the time., and no problem. Don't have to worry about jumpers, either.

About the other question, drivers, the sata requires its own BIOS extension, usually called RAID because it does enable that, but mainly it recognizes the sata drives. When my box boots, after the beep indicating a successful POST, then the RAID BIOS shows up and indicates the drives it recognizes and then control is given to the boot drive. The drivers enable the mobo BIOS to recognize and communicate (turn control over) with the RAID BIOS just like the SCSI drivers do with the SCSI BIOS.

If you use FAT32, a win98 boot floppy can be used to move files from disk to disk between the satas and from sata to ata and back. I use a bootable DOS CD with the appropriate files and lots of other utilities handy in troubleshooting as well as ghost. With NTFS, you can only work in 2K or XP. With NTFS, you can only work in 2K or XP.

 

sparrow

could you look at these 2 links and give me your opinion.

http://www.adaptergear.com/productd...tid=171&CAT=171

http://www.sataadapter.com/

 

Saw them before (above). No experience with usb hdd connections. Always put disks in my computer temporarily. It's simple and works every time.