Tried SATA to IDE adapter...now hard drive dead

MisterEd

MisterEd

I bought the following SATA to IDE adapter because it had good reviews:

StarTech.com IDE to SATA Hard Drive or Optical Drive Adapter Converter -40-Pin PATA to 2.5" SATA HDD / SSD / ODD Converter (IDE2SAT2)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EOJNGC2/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

I tried it with one of the smallest SATA drives I have:
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003-1ER162 SATA 7200RPM 1TB

I tried using these with Computer #2

Windows XP found the drive OK but said it needed to be formatted. I should have stopped there but went ahead and told it to format the drive. It took over two hours to format the drive.The drive seemed OK. I later shut down the computer.

The next day I put the same Seagate drive in an external drive enclosure. Seatools in Windows 10 said the drive failed the short test. Later I tried Seatools again but it couldn't find the drive. The drive did the same thing in another enclosure.

It appears the drive is totally dead now. Note Just a few months ago CrystalDiskInfo showed the drive's health at 100%.

Now I am at an impasse. I am afraid to try another drive with the SATA to IDE adapter until I figure out what happened to the firs drive.
 
TMTGTR said:
I'm sorry to hear this. Can you at least back up the ide data before attempting using the adapter?
Click to expand...
All this started with this thread...Need good IDE drives

I finally got around to testing the SATA to IDE adapter I just bought. I hadn't copied any real data to the SATA drive so nothing was lost. I pulled the SATA drive out of the Windows XP computer after wondering why it took so long to format. Is was only after testing it in an external enclosure with Seagate Seatools on Windows 11 did it fail. At first it just failed the Short Self-Test but then it stopped being recognized at all by the Windows 11 computer. I thought it might be the external enclosure so I bought another one. That made no difference.

It is possible the drive had been failing anyways but I did not know about it. The problem with Seagate Seatools is that all my Seagate drives fail the Short Self-Test. What has me confused is that the same so-called failing drives show good with Crystal Disk Info.

One time I went through 3 new 2TB Seagate Desktop external drives because each was failing the Seatools Short Self-Test. Contacting Seagate was a waste because they did not acknowledge there was even a problem. Note this external drive is now 9 years old and is still working just fine.

Recently, I bought Hard Disk Sentinel so I am going to go back and see if I can do some more definitive drive testing. BTW, I have another identical 1TB Seagate SATA HDD that I want to thoroughly test before I commit to using it with the SATA to IDE adapter. If it tests OK and fails also then I am going to reevaluate using this SATA to IDE adapter.
 
I'm sorry your drive failed; you said your external drive is 9 years old? Wow, it's very rare that drives last me over 6 years!

"It is possible the drive had been failing anyways but I did not know about it."

I think this is very possible. I've had drives completely fail after a format when they were working just fine beforehand. I also use a 2TB external Seagate drive, so I'll be sure to check this thread for updates. Hope all goes well for you going forward.
 
I used Hard Disk Sentinel to test my other two 1TB SATA HDDs, They both passed the Short and Extended Self-Tests. I am going to try one of them with the SATA to IDE adapter. Hopefully, there won't be a problem this time.

I paid more than I wanted (18.94 USD) for the SATA to IDE adapter because it had good reviews. Can someone suggest one that is somewhat cheaper that is known to work OK?
 
tekkaman said:
Those are super computers one with 2000 GB of ram and the other 500 GB :eek:
Click to expand...
For an XP computer 500GB was considered the sweet spot for RAM. The other computer dual-boot with Windows 7 so 2000GB helped with that. Both of these were desktops.

BTW, I have an HP Pavilon laptop that came with Windows XP and 1000GB RAM. When I upgraded it to Windows 7 I increase the RAM to 2000GB. Note like the desktop mentioned above that was the maximum RAM for each. Unfortunately, recently the video failed so this laptop can no longer be used.

BTW, even though all three of these computers worked best with Windows XP I used Windows 7 on two of them because:
  • Windows 7 was more advanced so was easier to configure
  • Unlike Windows XP, Windows 7 could be used on the Internet.
Windows XP is OK to tinker with and play games that only worked on it. Otherwise, I have other computers that have Windows 10 and 11 that I now use on a daily basis.

BTW, I read online that some people disparage new versions of Windows after XP. It is something about not being spied on or something like that. They say they have switched to Linux. From the late 1990s and early 2000s I dual-booted Windows 95/98/XP and Linux. After 10-12 years I eventually gave up on Linux and just used Windows.
 
Sorry I was only joking with you. I thing you meant 2GB not 2000GB. 512MB not 500GB. Unless I'm missing something
 
I want to update this thread in what I think must have happened. I suspect the 1TB SATA hard drive had been initialized GPT. Since Windows XP doesn't know anything about GPT it was confused by it. It thought it wasn't formatted so asked me if I wanted it to be formatted. I made the mistake of saying yes. In the process of doing so the drive was destroyed.

I didn't make the same mistake again. I used EaseUS Partition Master Pro to check the SATA hard drives before I used them with the Windows XP computers. I used a built-in function to convert them from GPT to MBR if that was needed.

I have two computers with Windows XP. I have since installed Windows XP on SATA HDDs on both of them. The 1st computer has an onboard SATA controller. The 2nd computer has a SYBA SD-VIA-1A2S PCI card. It supports SATA-150 and PATA-133. Note with both computers I had to hit F6 during the Windows XP setup to load the SATA driver from a floppy disk.

I now have enough 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard drives now that I can hopefully not have to use IDE (PATA) hard drives with my Windows XP computers any more. haven't decided what to do with my remaining IDE (PATA) drives.

Right now I my biggest concern is CD/DVD drives. The DVD/RW IDE drive on Windows XP computer #1 continues to work OK. However, the DVD/RW IDE drive on Windows XP computer #2 failed just before I decided to install Windows XP on the SATA HDD. I pulled a CD/RW drive from another computer to replace it. This other computer also had a DVD/RW IDE drive so the CD/RW wasn't needed. I could try to find DVD/RW IDE drives on eBay but they aren't cheap and are of unknown working order. For now since everything is working OK I will leave what to do about that for another day.
 
Well I hope GPT was your issue, because I was going to say that I own various SATA <> IDE converters and I've never had a problem with any of them... and they're all $2-$5 chinese cheapos from ebay lol
 
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