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IDE to SD Card adapter for older PCs?

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RaptorZX3

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Mar 29, 2013
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Quebec, Canada
i wonder...can i use a IDE to SD card adapter to replace those now-expensive and prone-to-break-anytime 1gb-5gb HDDs? It would be so much better to use these kinds of adapters, but i don't know if they would work on an AT board for 386, 486 or Pentium 1 computers...
 
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Funny. I was just looking at my stash of old 3.5" drives and thinking that I'll never use them, especially, the sub 10GB ones. Do you think anyone would pay anything to have one tested and shipped? (It's the testing that's the bother).
 
IDE to SD can be used OK generally. I use one to boot a P4 running Debian acting as an NFS server for backups actually.

SD-to-CF-to-IDE also works, but the SD-to-CF adapters I've tried haven't supported 8-bit transfer mode.

HTH
 
Chuck(G) said:
Funny. I was just looking at my stash of old 3.5" drives and thinking that I'll never use them, especially, the sub 10GB ones. Do you think anyone would pay anything to have one tested and shipped? (It's the testing that's the bother).
Click to expand...

I binned most of mine a while back, sold a few good ones but didn't get much for them, it was hardly worth the hassle of testing them / packing and running them down to the post office.
 
I tried all sorts of storage solutions for old computers and in short:

- IDE to CF adapters work very well. The adapters are cheap and so are CF cards. Recommended for DOS only. They struggle under W95 / W98
- IDE to SATA adapter + modern SATA drive with 32 GB limit enabled (SEATOOLS). Fantastic for faster machines like PIII Tualatin 1400. Highly recommended for W95 / W98
- PCI SATA controller + modern SATA drive with 32 GB limit enabled. A great solution as well, especially for machines that have PCI but old BIOS with capacity limitation
- Use of DDO to unlock capacity on really old computers. Used this to get a 32 GB CF card and a 2TB SATA drive with 32GB partition going on a 386DX.

I've used all options in many machines and scenarios and all of them work very well.

CD-ROM drives? Stick to old IDE drives.

 
RaptorZX3 said:
i wonder...can i use a IDE to SD card adapter to replace those now-expensive and prone-to-break-anytime 1gb-5gb HDDs? It would be so much better to use these kinds of adapters, but i don't know if they would work on an AT board for 386, 486 or Pentium 1 computers...
Click to expand...

I use an sd card to boot my P4 via USB and run Dos, In my older gear ie: XT's i use IDE-CF adapters, The adapters and CF cards can be picked up pretty cheap.
 
I use the inexpensive bracket adapters available on eBay; e.g.

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There are many others.
 
There are all kind of models.

- go directly into the IDE port on the motherboard
- go onto the IDE plug on the ribbon cable
- have just 1 or 2 CF cards
- Go in the back of the computer, like the one posted above

They all should work fine however.
 
Yes but there are maybe some models that are not compatible with DOS or something, so it would be good to redirect me to one someone bought here and can tell me if it work in DOS, and i assume it would work even without drivers.
 
RaptorZX3 said:
Yes but there are maybe some models that are not compatible with DOS or something, . . .
Click to expand...

I don't think so. It is just an IDE adapter with no electronics. AFAIK, when there are problems it is with the formatting of the drive which is a function of the individuall drive and the way you format it. As the formatter, you are the one responsible for chosing parameters which are useable by DOS. That means chosing a suitable file system as well as partition and maximum drive sizes.

FWIT, I've been using a Kingston 8GB elite pro 133X continuously for a couple of years now. It's formatted for use with MS-DOS 6.22.
 
RaptorZX3 said:
so it's formatted in FAT/FAT16?
Click to expand...

That's right. I use 10 partitions, C to L. C: is 255 Meg so has 4K clusters. D: to K: has 511M with 8K clusters, and L: 1023M with 16K clusters. I highly recommend using many drive letters as it facilitates less typing and offers safety with segregation of data as well.

I haven't done thorough testing on the choice of 4K clusters for the C drive, but my reasoning is that most of the files are small there. It is used exclusively for operating system files and is the only one in my path.
 
...and I've been using in one of my systems, an 8GB FAT32-formatted CF to run Win98SE. I've got another running Debian--and yet another running WIndows XP. Great stuff if you don't need a lot of storage--you can change systems just by changing cards (which is why I like the ones on a bracket).

Many microdrives will also work, if you're wedded to spinning things.

Regardless, they use next to no power at all.
 
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