Has anyone had much luck with this style of flat PCB based 2.5" to 3.5" adapter?
2_5_3_5_Adapter.jpg
I've got mSATA drives in most of my retro machines using the JMicron based 2.5" IDE adapters - either the ones with a caddy or the smaller bare PCB ones. But the common adapters for connecting 2.5" and 3.5" IDE always seem kind of janky - especially the black ones with the Molex power leads just soldered to two of the pins. So when I saw this type on AliExpress I thought it was a great solution as it gives you a firm mounting for the 2.5" drive, and the IDE header faces out rather than up, which is helpful in tight locations.
I only just got around to testing it with an mSATA adapter and got really weird results - on a retro machine the drive is detected by the BIOS as usual, but it won't boot and FDISK (from a boot floppy) won't even see it and quits with an error. I tried it on a USB adapter on a modern machine and it seemed to be either randomly not detected at all, or detected as a removable drive with no media. The power LED comes on, but nothing at all on the red activity LED.
If I plug the mSATA to 2.5" adapter directly to the USB adapter, or to the retro PC via a janky adapter, it works fine! So the problem is in the 2.5" to 3.5" PCB. Which seems weird! Isn't it just passive? Even weirder - when I tried with an old 2.5" spinning disk, that DID work OK via the 2.5" to 3.5" PCB.
I tried reflowing the solder on the 40-pin header as some joints didn't look good, but it made no difference. Might the little black SMD components near the power line be doing something odd? As far as I can see they're the only difference between this and a purely passive adapter?
(also worth saying, I assumed the outer holes on the PCB would match up with the standard 3.5" HDD bottom mounting hole locations - but they don't! )