Getting an old system up and running
Community Forums/General Help/Getting an old system up and running
| ||
| Hello I was moving office the other day and I found an old PC which appears complete, apart from a hard drive. It only supports IDE. It'd be nice to get it running again as a low-end test system running XP, but there's an obvious problem with that - problem being that IDE hard drives are as rare as rocking horse crap nowadays. So I have two choices - risk a second-hand IDE drive, or find a PCI/SATA card and use a SATA drive. But those things only seem to support SATA-I and I've read reports about them being very hit-and-miss depending on the type of motherboard (in this case, an ASRock K7S41GX). Thoughts? |
| ||
| PCI/SATA card Have you checked out IDE 2 SATA adaptors. There is http://www.amazon.co.uk/GadgetpoolUK-SATA-Bi-Directional-Converter-Adaptor-Type-B/dp/B007G5N14O/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1406815469&sr=8-15&keywords=ide+sata+to+usb+adapter on Amazon.Edit: Just read some of the reviews on this and I wouldn't touch it. But there should be a few other around. |
| ||
| Have you checked out IDE 2 SATA adaptors Cool beans! And for less than a tenner too :-) |
| ||
| @Brucey: Didn't check-out the reviews. They all basically said it was pants. These looks better http://www.amazon.co.uk/Startech-com-inch-Male-Adapter-Converter/dp/B000ZLM9IA/ref=pd_cp_computers_2 http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-Bi-Directional-SATA-Adapter-Converter/dp/B00310MFPY/ref=pd_cp_computers_1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/PATA-SATA-Card-Adapter-Converter/dp/B003AG79GO/ref=pd_sim_computers_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0B726C21AE5YEYCEGEB6 |
| ||
| Install a USB card. And go external |
| ||
| Install a USB card. And go external Only makes sense if the BIOS supports booting from USB, of course. As the board is around 10 years old I'd check that first. I'd only consider USB (internal or extrnal) if the combination (board, hardware, OS) would allow for USB3 as USB2 is limited to 30 MB/s - which is much slower than the last IDE drives. @GfK: My advice would also be either an IDE/SATA-interface (max 133 MB/s on this board) or a PCI card with a SATA interface (max 533 MB/s as this board supports PCI 2.2). The latter would be good enough for SSDs if the OS supports them. But it's not only a question of which interface to use but also what capacity is needed. The classic consumer IDE drives were often limited to 500 gigs - if you need more than that you will either need SATA drives or a more exotic solution which I don't recommend on such ancient hardware. Invest as little as possible in this board - get a cheap SATA drive and a cheap IDE2SATA or PCI2SATA adapter... Also: Have you checked if the capacitors on board are OK? I've seen lots of boards from this time period that had slightly blown caps (a bit of brown gunk in the predetermined breaking point on top) which then resulted in unstable operation. |
| ||
| The board looks fine for it's age - all the capacitors are clean and it powers up fine. I have no idea about booting from USB, never even thought about that as I figured USB transfer rates could be a huge bottleneck. I'll look into an IDE/SATA adapter, though I was led to believe that such things don't exist... |
| ||
| You could also consider an IDE to Compact Flash adapter, e.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Pin-Compact-Flash-Adapter/dp/B0026OYEEQ 64GB Compact Flash cards are pretty cheap. Also, the CF standard includes an IDE mode which should make them good replacements for hard drives. |
| ||
| In my experience the IDE/SATA adapters are notooriously unreliable FWIW: You can still buy a ton of new/old stock IDE harddrives through amazon these days, for absolute peanuts. |
| ||
| I think that's going to be the best option. £4.99 for a 160GB drive, and £5.99 for ECONOMY postage, though??! Need to do some shopping around, I think. |
| ||
| @Calibrator USB 2 is 14 years old. If a ten year old computer didn't have usb then ok, however I would be surprised if the bios couldn't support it, hence "Install a USB card" @GFK Yes, It would be a bottle neck most of the time, however because there are several factors that can effect actual/recognized throughput it is possible for there to be a situation where a USB 2.0 attached drive would perform better than an internal Ultra 66 type one. You must have seen it where two ides on a shared cable are not as fast as usb transfer (I know I've made an IDE Bios assumption) |
| ||
| H&K: I've seen plenty of older computers that do have USB, but can't boot from it. Even modern computers with USB ports out the wazoo often can't boot from all of them -- on my fairly new motherboard, only the USB 2 ports are bootable, the USB 3 ports are not. |
| ||
| USB booting can be achieved without BIOS support. No idea how it works, but can verify from experience that somehow it does. |
| ||
| @Xlsior I did know that, but to be fair had forgotten, so point to you. (I would counter that you could "possibly" boot from floppy into a USB installation, but that would then need to ensure a working floppy drive and and a USB card. In my mind the whole idea is only viable if you have the stuff lying around, so trying it would cost nothing) |
   |