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IDE drives Help!

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Hi guys!

I've got 2 IDE drives lying around and I was hoping to be able to use them in my old computer. To make a long story short, the motherboard only has a FLOPPY connector which obviously differs physically from an IDE connector.

So my question is if there are any cables that have IDE on one end and floppy on the other. I suppose I can get one of those SATA/IDE adapters but those retail for almost as much as a new drive cost. Are there any workarounds or am I screwed here???

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Most probably, apart from Floppy connector, your motherboard has also SATA connectors. But - you cannot connect IDE to floppy.

You can get cheap IDE-to-PCI (or PCI-Express, depending on what slots your motherboard has free) controller, and connect your IDE drives to it. SATA-to-IDE converter is also an option, but lot of people are not happy with that.

Sounds like your system isn't old enough. :) 

PCI IDE cards are probably the best option, but if you're not liking the price of the SATA-IDE adapters, you won't like those prices either.

And I'm one of those people who loath those SATA/IDE adapters. More trouble than they are worth... much more trouble. :) 

New SATAs are cheap... Use the IDE drives as book-ends, paperweights or other decorative purposes. :p 

one other thing is you can buy a ide case for more then one drive that has it own power supply and a ethernet port and connect it to your network as a network device. not as cheep as the ide card route but another use for old drives.
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Thx for your input guys!

Um, yeah I was afraid of that! However, I don't feel like occupying any of the PCI/PCIe slots as they are needed and far to valuable to be handling some cheap IDE drives (if you know what I'm saying).

Anxious to know why you don't like the SATA/IDE adapters.

My input for those adapters:
data corruption, BSODs (when using IDE/OS via these adapters), performance below IDE performance.
I've experienced these individually and simultaneously. It's been a while now, so I don't remember the manufacturers of them, but at one time I had 5 of those things laying around. I started practicing my juggling at one point. :) 

One of them, and probably one of the most annoying problems; would actually back itself off the IDE connector and fall into the case!! 1 out of 5, therefore it was likely a bad design or out of dimensional tolerance fluke. But given the vibration intensity of a CD-ROM drive, I could see that happening more often there.

But I do admit, this is one man's experience. Your mileage may vary. :) 

evga_fan said:
Whoa! Really? That bad you say, I mean it's just a dvd drive...

Hmm, might just have to pick up on my juggling skills :p 


You do make a good point. I only used them on HDDs... If you're willing to part with a few bucks, give it a whirl. You've always got the juggling to fall back on. :) 
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