How can I use an old PATA hard disk drive on my newer SATA-only computer?
I've got some old hard drives I'd like to connect to my new computer to quickly transfer gigs and gigs of data from the old drives to my nice large new drives. The old drives are PATA/IDE/ATA and the new computer's motherboard only supports SATA drives.
I found this PCI IDE raid controller card. Will this work? How do I power the old drives. My power supply has only new-style connectors.
I want to do a one-time dump of miscellaneous data (mp3s, DVD images, MAME roms, photos, videos, documents, etc.) off of 5-or-6 smaller, older PATA drives onto my newer, larger SATA drives. I've been unable to "retire" two old computers because I've never gotten around to this housekeeping task. Now I want to get rid of the clutter.
I'd rather avoid the USB solutions. I've got a lot of data to transfer and I want it to go as quickly as possible.
The DVD drive is SATA--not PATA. It's a Dell computer, they don't seem to give away a single extra port on their motherboards. I'm surprised it came with even a free PCI slot.
I've asked: How much slower is USB than SATA or PATA for HDD?
I don't know a power supply model number or anything. It came with a cheap Dell computer. There are no molex power connectors because the computer came with no such drives. The DVD drive is SATA.
I've found adapters, but they go the wrong way: old power supply to new drive.
This was for a one-time bulk file copy to retire/repurpose the old disk drives and I'm now done. But, I would be interested to know if anyone found such an adapter.
I ended up Frankensteining two computers together. I put a PCI PATA card in the new machine for the data connection and got power from a different computer. Ugly.
The easiest thing to do would be to buy a external enclosure, and use that to power/access the drives.
Newegg's selection
Here's a power adapter that goes the right way...
SATA 15-Pin Power Male Connector / Adapter / Converter to Standard Molex 4-Pin Power Female for Hard Drives and Optical Drives
Great for those with new Dell, HP, Compaq PCs that do not include any 4-Pin Molex connectors on their Power Supplies!
If you need to use an older IDE hard drive or optical drive with a new SATA power supply, look no further than xPCgear’s LP4 to SATA power adapter.
http://www.xpcgear.com/lp4satafm.html