Syba SD-ADA45006 Dual Compact Flash to 44 Pin IDE 2.5" Adapter
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332612388077?epid=1300056264

Just add a 2GB Compact Flash card.

I use them in a desktop with a 44-pin to 40 pin ribbon cable/adapter, though, but it works great.

Chr$ wrote on 2022-02-17, 12:46:

Is there some kind of modern SSD in 2.5" formfactor with the old 44 pin IDE connector that only has a capacity of a few GB? Or is there perhaps a known 'newer' model of 44 pin HDD that can be restricted to fool my BIOS into thinking it's of a lower capacity?

There are at least two types of solutions:

1. 44-pin male IDE to CF/SD/microSD card adapter plus a card with "small" capacity. This would be an easier solution as CF/SD/microSD cards and readers are available just about anywhere, making transferring files rather easy.

2. Industrial Disk On Module (DOM) with 44-pin female connector, such as this one I have:

The lower part is a male-male gender changer so it can be connected to a modern computer using an IDE-USB cable.

jmicron pata-sata adapter and SSD with HPA set to smaller capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_configuration_overlay
edit: or maybe even a bigger laptop pata drive with support for HPA

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-02-17, 15:07:

jmicron pata-sata adapter and SSD with HPA set to smaller capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_configuration_overlay
edit: or maybe even a bigger laptop pata drive with support for HPA

Very interesting. So as a quick and dirty fix I could 'resize' a 40GB HDD that I have laying around to something like 4GB and that might work?

And thanks for the other suggestions. That's great, I knew there must be a practical way!

There are also nice msata-pata adapters (either cheap jmicron based or nicer, more compatible marvell based ones) which coupled with dirt-cheap msata drives from aliexpress (available with capacities as low as 8GB) work nice for old laptops.

chiveicrook wrote on 2022-02-17, 17:32:

There are also nice msata-pata adapters (either cheap jmicron based or nicer, more compatible marvell based ones) which coupled with dirt-cheap msata drives from aliexpress (available with capacities as low as 8GB) work nice for old laptops.

Hm. I was going to recommend an CF card+adapter for DOS/9x and the EWF filter+INF patch for XP Windows..

But your idea seems to be.. Really good! 😎👍From what I can see, there are decent msata to 44pin ATA chassis, too.
I think that's really worth a try. Better than using microSDs, perhaps.
These msata cards are using real SSD chips, at least. 🙂

Do as much digging as possible before you go spending money. Many old SATA/PATA laptops have BIOS whitelists that make it impossible to replace original storage and peripheral components with ones that were not part of the original parts list. For the most part, this means HDDs on old laptops and WiFi cards on newer ones, though there are some instances where both of those are locked down. The only way past that is to get a hacked BIOS, which isn't always easy to find.

Too late, I've spent the money! Went for a msata adapter and an 8gb msata. If it doesn't work I'll see if I can use it somewhere else. The BIOS is a Phoenix, labelled Gateway 2000 v5.09 from 1999, which is newer than the computer so it must have been updated at some point. If it doesn't work I will also look into reducing the visible space on an early 2000s 40GB drive down to 4GB or even 2GB.

Wow, HDAT2 is a game changer. I was able to resize a 40GB drive (dirt cheap from that era) down to 2GB did a /sys on it and it works fine in the problem laptop. I'll still see if the 8gb msata also works as I think I'd feel better with that, but if it doesn't, a slightly less old HDD that has been doctored will be fine.