Use IDE to SATA adapter with HDD Dock??

[epilecutt]

I'm looking at buying a StarTech HDD Dock from Newegg and I'm curious if it's possible to use a SATA to IDE adapter cable rather than pay the $30 dollars for an actual adapter made for the dock.

It's a bit ridiculous to pay $25 dollars more for a piece that would do the same thing the $3 cable would do. If this will work, I'll gladly plug a cable into the dock as long as it wouldn't do any damage.

 

[sminlal]

SATA and IDE protocols are significantly different and a simple cable isn't enough to allow connection of an IDE drive to a SATA port. The connection needs active logic which can interface with both IDE and SATA and perform the conversion between them, and this in turn would require some way to provide power to the logic.

You could probably package this up in a cable somehow, but I doubt it would be any cheaper than the adapter you've linked to.

 

[epilecutt]

Best answer selected by epilecutt.

 

[epilecutt]

Ahh... I appreciate the reply. Seems I was looking at the wrong cable to begin with and your reply is exactly what I needed to know. Thank you, sir.