Laptop IDE to SATA convertor

Anyone tried the above, wondering if I can use an IDE to SATA convertor on my laptop mitac 5033 and fit an SSD?

I have installed an IDE to SDHC memory card converter in an old MP3 player. Works great. I now have a cheap 32GB solid-state drive instead of a 20GB IDE hard disk. I'm not sure if that set-up would be good for a laptop though, but a proper mSATA converter should be fine. I would suggest that you get one with a 2.5" cage though, not something that just hangs off the IDE header.

Reminds me - I've got an old Tosh box in the attic. Can't remember how much memory it's got though. Just think, a laptop with two serial ports, parallel port, no ethernet and no USB (PCMCIA only). He, he. I could shove the same set-up and a PCMCIA 802.11n card in it and see how it flies.

Edit: IDE to SDHC converter available on Amazon.

Edited by micksharpe (Tue 29-Mar-16 21:22:49)

Just been benchmarking Pen Drive vs laptop hard disk.

Pendrive Novatech generic 2gb via USB 2.0 PCMIA 13257 read/write
Mitac 5033 Fujitsu 4gb IDE dma mode 2, 4872 read/write

So I have put my programs on the pen drive.

What speed in bits does IDE dma mode 2 run at, drive or interface slow?

I'd be more inclined to go for an IDE SSD.

In reply to a post by Banger:

What speed in bits does IDE dma mode 2 run at, drive or interface slow?

Linky

Note that some of these converters can force PIO mode rather than DMA. Mine does, but then it's not a problem for an MP3 player. Check before you buy.

Edit: Belay that. It was the MP3 player that required PIO mode. The question was "will the adapter support it".

Edited by micksharpe (Tue 29-Mar-16 20:37:08)

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I'd be more inclined to go for an IDE SSD.

Not many around and I'd be concerned about reliability. I decided to steer clear of them.

So ultra dma mode is 33mb/s but getting 5mb/s. USB 2.0 is 60 mb/s but getting 18 mb/s on my corsair pen drive on the laptop, sound right?

The transfer speeds are 'burst' speeds -- the fastest that the interfaces will go. Actual throughputs will be a lot lower. Also, the USB protocol has a lot of overhead that can make disk accesses much slower than if they are connected using PATA or SATA. This is true even for USB 3.0. USB 3.1 (SuperSpeed) overcomes this limitation.

Your figures for UDMA sound about right, as do your USB 2.0 figures. By way of comparison, my Seagate 1TB 5400 rpm external drives run at about 70MB/s when connected to a USB 3.0 port, but that's only when writing to large files. Access to small files is much slower.

Edited by micksharpe (Tue 29-Mar-16 21:57:29)

Had a look inside the lappy and it appears there isnt enough space for an adapter, the hard drive is at the front corner in a caddy which is screwed to the motherboard and the connector is fixed to the mother board too, looks like I am looking for an IDE SSD if I can find a decent make or the IDE SDHC card adapter.

If there is enough room for a standard 2.5" IDE disk drive, then there will be enough room for a converter (with a cage) that I linked to. The cage will have exactly the same external dimensions (and fixing holes) as a 2.5" drive.

Edited by micksharpe (Thu 31-Mar-16 17:25:23)