In my sysadmin work, it would be useful to me to have one of those bare-hard drive docking station deals, but they only work with SATA drives. This lack of IDE support is understandable with 3.5" IDE drives, since there's no physical connector placement standard. But there is such a standard for 2.5" IDE drives. Regardless, no one seems to make one.

But it seems like someone ought to make a 44-pin 2.5" IDE HDD to SATA port adapter. I have found a few that do this, but they fail to conform to the placement standards for SATA connectors, and, often and more importantly, don't deal with the SATA power connection at all.

Does anyone know of such an adapter? Or, really, any other way to conveniently deal with 2.5" laptop hard drives? I know I can get a USB interface, and there's (usually) enough power coming from the USB port to power the hard drive. But I'd really like a faster interface, and there doesn't seem to be any reason I couldn't use a correct adapter to plug the IDE drive into a SATA dock that's connected to the computer via an eSATA connection and get decent speeds. Except for that that correct adapter doesn't exist.

If I can't find one, I'm thinking about getting a board designer friend of mine to make one for me. But I'd rather just buy one.

You can buy the USB adapter dongles that plug into the drive still. It just won't be a dock style one. The one I've got will take a 40 or 44 pin PATA connection and a SATA socket. If you're using the 3.5" HD or SATA HD then you need to use the included PSU otherwise its powered via USB. If the laptop drive requires a large amount of power then it does have issues spinning up though...

This site looks a bit sketchy, but they have one.

The right angle part of the adapter might be a little annoying to wedge into a dock though. They do exist it seems so maybe somebody else makes one that doesn't have that orientation.

Bizarre. So close, yet useless.

I suppose if worse came to worst, I could solder a different IDE header onto it.

That's for 3.5" 40-pin hard drives, doesn't have a SATA power connector, and doesn't comply with the connector positioning specification.

Other than that, right on the money.

What about this?

http://usb.brando.com/ide-to-sata-hdd-docking-converter_p01076c032d015.html

or this?

http://www.advantech.eu/products/SATA-to-IDE-%2844-pin%29-Converter-Module/mod_1-2QF48V.aspx

Exactly what I'm looking for, except it's for 40-pin 3.5" drives instead of 44-pin 2.5" drives.


Also, exactly what I'm looking for, except it connects a SATA drive to an IDE port, which is the wrong way around.

Neither one seems to have an appropriate sister product.

How about getting this and then adding some 3.5"-2.5" rails and a 40-44 pin adapter? Kinda kludgy though.

It looks that that might be physically hard to deal with, given the size of the 3.5" connectors and the likely size of a 44-pin to 40-pin data + 4-pin power adapter.

Ok these four items should work.

IDE to SATA HDD Docking Converter
cable
male male adpator
2.5 to 3.5 bracket

Egads! I think I'd rather solder on a new header.

This one may be easier to put a female header on.

Wrong way round. That is to plug a SATA drive into a PATA controller.

oops. Brain fart.