Has anyone used a PATA drive to SATA motherboard dongle thing?

[Daftpanzer]

Earlier this year, I bought a 250 gig PATA drive fairly cheap (since things were moving to SATA). I want to use it as a secondary drive in my new PC, ideally for dual boot options of Vista on the first drive and XP on the other. Anyway, the new PC came with an all-SATA motherboard.

I've been looking at this dongle/converter things online, that either plug into the end of SATA cables or into the back of PATA drives, supposedly enabling them to work with a SATA motherboard. But there are either no reviews, or the reviews talk of heat build-up and drives being listed as an 'unknown device'.

So, wondering if anyone here happens to have experience with these converter things, and can advise me about whether they can work reliably (enough for a bootable drive) ?

Of course I could get a new SATA drive, but then my new-ish 250 gig will just be languishing in an old computer

Thanks for any help!

 

[Snovvdog]

I tryed using it, but my mainboard would freeze on detecting hdd/optical drives...
The best thing you can do is buy an IDE/RAID pci add in card on ebay or anywhere for 10 euros... ( or 7 quid for you)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

You could buy a PCI PATA controller such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815280001

The dongles probably dont work very well because of the differences in a a sata connection and a pata one. They're just too different mechanically and electrically.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Thanks!

I get the feeling that a PCI IDE card is the way to go. Just one more question - does it work just like an old PATA / IDE connected straight to the motherboard? Are there any complications going through a PCI card?

 

[Snovvdog]

Thanks!

I get the feeling that a PCI IDE card is the way to go. Just one more question - does it work just like an old PATA / IDE connected straight to the motherboard? Are there any complications going through a PCI card?

When it's set in ide mode: Usually none at all.

When set at raid mode: There might be, in the form of having to install drivers from the floppy during windows setup for it to detect the hdd...
But that aside, there should be none.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If you only have one drive, you probably shouldnt care about RAID. In simple mode its just like you plugged the drive into the motherboard, although I think you might still need to install the drivers in windows before it sees the drive. So maybe putting an OS on the drive might not be such a good idea. Im not certain about this though.

 

[GoodGame]

You mean like this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232004

I did get it working on my IDE hard drive, but I had to connect all the power supplies at once (SATA and PATA). I found it more useful to convert my IDE DVD and use my lone IDE slot to master-slave my two IDE hard drives.

 

[Daftpanzer]

@Goodgame, yes that is the kind of thing I meant. I had read bad things about them, but that one seems to get good reviews.

@All, thanks for the advice I guess I could splash out on both a PCI IDE card and an adapter thing. That would still be a lot cheaper than getting a new HD, and even if they don't work I could probably use them for something in future

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Well, you can find a new 500 gig SATA hd for around 75$ on sale now, so its not that much cheaper.

 

[GoodGame]

On that note, it might me wiser to just convert the old IDE hard-drives to external backup storage, and get one of new ginormous SATA drives (like Tetrabyte range). It's only about $30 for an external kit, vs. $15 per dongle vs. $15 the PCI IDE controller card, so you could go either way. The choice is portable external storage, how bad you need that PCI slot, and whether there's any difference in data transmission and power usuage between the dongle and the controller card. I'd probably go with the controller card since it also gives back-up connections, though my mobo already has like 6 SATA connections.