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mSATA ssd adaptor in old pc

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First post, by Rhuwyn

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THis may seem like a strange idea. I see as lot of folks using CF to IDE adaptor in order to use a more solid state type media in older machines.

I actually have a couple of 32GB M.2 SSDs which came out of more modern machines which I put larger SSDs in.

I started looking around to see what kind of adapters were out there and how I might put these things to use in older machines. I see there are adaptors out there which are intended to adapt it to replace a 2.5 Inch Laptop IDE drive. Unfortunately I really don't have any old laptops needing a hard drive at the moment. (But that might change).

Then we also have adaptors that can used to connect a 2.5 IDE drive to a 3.5 IDE drive.I was wondering if anyone had already attempted this or if anyone had any thoughts on daisy chaining this adaptors so I these working in older machines. 32GB should be plenty in a retro system!.

Reply 1 of 2, by alexanrs

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AFAIK the 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapters are just passive ones, there is no active circuitry. So if the M.2 to IDE converter is decent, it should work alright,

Reply 2 of 2, by cde

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Rhuwyn wrote:

Then we also have adaptors that can used to connect a 2.5 IDE drive to a 3.5 IDE drive.I was wondering if anyone had already attempted this or if anyone had any thoughts on daisy chaining this adaptors so I these working in older machines. 32GB should be plenty in a retro system!.

Sorry to wake an old thread but I did just this and it is working extremely well, I even have full TRIM support (obviously not directly usably by Windows < 7 and Linux < 3.2, but still allows the drive to be trimmed externally). However PIO mode 4 must be set in the BIOS; UltraDMA seems to be non-working with Windows 9x/XP. The motherboard is a KT7A (VIA 686B southbridge). The setup is as follows:

- Samsung mSATA 860 EVO (250 Go)
- mSATA to IDE 2.5 board (JMICRON JM 20330 SATA to IDE bridge)
- passive 2.5 to 3.5 IDE adapter

The attachment IMG_20191207_145702.jpg is no longer available

This particular mSATA to IDE board is provided with a 2.5 IDE enclosure (not shown on the picture above), so it's the same form factor as a 2.5 IDE hard drive.

On the other hand I've had a bad experience with a Transcend SSD in a 2,5 IDE form factor. It failed very quickly even though the drive was almost new. Such drives are also much costlier than the 850 or 860 EVO for the same capacity, eg. 200EUR for the TS128GPSD330 (128 GB), 120EUR for the TS64GPSD330 and about 80EUR for the TS32GPSD330. Also these drives do not support TRIM.

EDIT: In case someone stumbles upon this thread, I have found that Marvell 88SA8052-based adapters don't have the JM20330 DMA problem with old chipsets (in my case VIA686B), and support TRIM too. They are unfortunately difficult to find. Adapters from RENKFORCE, DeLOCK and Ableconn brands sometime carry the 88SA8052. Search for exemple "site:amazon.de 88SA8052" (or amazon.com) to find remaining stock. Those adapters are usually more expensive (30E or more).

https://www.amazon.de/Renkforce-MSATA-SSD-AUF … R/dp/B01ATC3J7O
https://www.amazon.com/Ableconn-IIDE-MSAT-2-5 … m/dp/B017VQT5YW
https://www.amazon.fr/Convertisseur-dinterfac … e/dp/B01ATC3J7O

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