Does IDE to SATA converters/adaptors works w/ SATA SSD?

Happy Hopping

Happy Hopping

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I am trying to help out a no. of friends. They have fast Xeon CPU based computer, but the computer is still in IDE. Should they:

1) install a SATA controller card and try to boot up on that card?

Or

2) Buy 1 of those IDE to SATA converters and see if the sys. can see their drive as a SATA drive?
 
I've seen this discussion a number of times on the OCZ forums, nothing recently though.

There is logic on those converters. So far, I've not found one that can support a SSD for much time. I'm not sure if they're poor quality or if the SSD's massive I/Os are burning them out. A SATA controller would be your best bet. Don't go cheap if you want the performance from the SSDs.

Jason
 
The good old IDE controllers support a maximum of 133 MB/Sec. Even if (!) the adapter should work, your friends wouldn't really benefit from their ssd.
Let them go for the Sata Controller, but make sure it's one which is supported by their OS and Mainboard
 
Thanks. The trick is to find 1 that is truly compatible on the motherboard. My friends are also using HP motherboard, so I'll see if some top brand name has a good SATA controller

EDIT: What are the top brand names? I just check Belkin and they don't sell SATA controller
 
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faulerbeamter said:
The good old IDE controllers support a maximum of 133 MB/Sec. Even if (!) the adapter should work, your friends wouldn't really benefit from their ssd.
Click to expand...

That's not entirely true. Even if the max speed is capped, SSDs will still be much faster than a platter disk due to the outrageous advantage they have in small random reads and writes, which is what drives are doing most of the time. But, upgrading to a mobo that has native SATA is the best way to go.
 
FYI, I borrowed one of those cheap Chinese IDE-SATA converters when trying to migrate to a new drive in my FreeNAS, since the stupid Dell I built it from only had one SATA port. After reading a small bit of data, the drive would no longer be seen until I rebooted. I repeated this about five times. Copying one or a few small files worked ok. Copying a lot of small files or one big file would kill it. I have no idea what the problem was, but there was most definitely a problem.

Hopefully the ones from bigger names would be better, but there is no way I would trust one of those cheap Meritline converters with any data that I valued after going through what I did.
 
Dont buy Belkin!! Belkin = Poo

I dont think ive ever seen a Belkin product that i was impressed with. Just the fact that they have like 20 different revisions of the same wireless adapter model number that all use different drivers makes me want to projectile vomit.
 
I like their cables. I done a search at newegg, the only 1 that is good is Adaptec. Price is not cheap though. It goes for $160

A decent SATA card should be around $40 at the most
 
JumpingJackson said:
Just the fact that they have like 20 different revisions of the same wireless adapter model number that all use different drivers makes me want to projectile vomit.
Click to expand...

Linksys should sue Belkin for stealing their ideas. A single model number NIC with multiple chipsets caused me all sorts of problems trying to get Linux working properly years ago.
 
Yeah SATA card is the way to go for sure. I for the life of me can't figure out why those IDE-SATA things even exist.

Dustin
 
Avoid those SATA-PATA converters, and instead get a SATA controller card.

I have one of those Meritline SATA-PATA converters, based on a SunPlus chip, and it works OK with PATA hard drives, but it was unreliable with SATA drives (WD, Samsung tested) and caused the read test of HDAT2 to lock up in 5-60 minutes, although it passed all other read scans, including MHDD's. I couldn't get the adapter to work at all with PATA DVD or CD drives. SATA drives had to be configured for SATA/150 for them to be recognized at all by this converter card. Another flaw is the undersized connector socket that can be plugged in backwards or off by two pins. Meritline refunded my $4 and told me to keep it.

And SATA controller card should support SATA/300 if the drive is a Hitachi or Samsung, which can't be switched to SATA/150 with jumpers (contrary to what Samsung's documentation says) but only with a program that requires a SATA/300 controller to work.
 
I've been looking high & low for someone who has installed an SSD in to an older system with an ICH5 southbridge, as the SATA ports on that SB are basically glorified SATA/IDE converters. So I'm wondering if the ICH5 has problems handling a SSD.

My friend has an aging Dell 4600 (P4 2.8C) and his harddive is dying so I told him to get a cheap Intel X25-V 40Gb that way it would give his old system a little spunk. Possibly I should have just suggested a whole new cheap system. Also I was wondering how bad the SATA (150Gbps) capped the performances. Actually, I think the ICH5 might be limited to 133Gbps as its still on the PCI bus, and a glorified SATA to IDE converter.

With the X25-V's already capped performance I figured only the sequential reads would really be hurt, as nearly everything else should be below what the ICH5 can handle.
 
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