IDE to USB adapter, do they exist?

[Kotu]

I am not asking about the usual usb to ide converter as these are very common (hopefully this will stop the skim readers giving the obviously wrong answer to this ), I am wondering if the reverse exists? I noticed a few other people searching for such a device on other forums but nearly all the answers are about the usual adapters.

The reason is that IDE SSDs are stupidly expensive and old IDE hard drives are very slow, but newer USB3 pen drives with 100MB/s reads match up quite nicely with UDMA5/6 speeds, they are quite cheap and the capacity is just right for an older PC. They are also useful for other stuff, whereas an IDE SSD is not.

I have only been able to find IDE->CompactFlash adapters so far and compactflash seems to be slower and more expensive than usb3 pendrives.

I have thrown together a (bad) image of what I was hoping to find, bear in mind I have shopped the middle part (if it was not obvious) so that a USB3 connector has been replaced with a male IDE connector, the dimensions will be off as a result:

 

[dreigns]

Yes on a rainforest site ( not allowed to say who there a competitor ) not sure how fast they are just type usb to usb 3.0

 

[Duke]

That is a very odd request I take it there is a reason you can't just swap the motherboard out or do it differently? For example putting in a PCI SATA card?

I'm not sure what the over head is on the IDE bus but allowing say 10% then you're only looking 90mb/sec? Seems less hassle to just get a late model 2.5"/3.5" IDE drive?

 

[Kotu]

the interface speeds surged ahead of what the drive were capable of at the time, a good IDE drive will likely only get about 20-30MB/sec with terribleMB/s random read/write performance.

Some numbers:

Int	Speed	Drive		Speed (read)
UDMA 0	16.7	IDE		30
UDMA 1	25	USB3 flash	90
UDMA 2	33.3	Sata Mech	100
UDMA 3	44.4	SSD		500
UDMA 4	66.7		
UDMA 5	100		
UDMA 6	133		
UDMA 7	167		
SATA 1	150		
SATA 2	300		
SATA 3	600

 

[Duke]

Yeah I remember at the time There is a WD model which is 7200rpm with 8mb cache around which shouldn't be too bad - WD2500AAJB.

Had a look at your original idea but not found what you're looking for Can't put in a SATA PCI card as mentioned?

 

[Kotu]

It wasn't just for normal PCs, I was thinking about old laptops or shuttles with limited space for additional cards, that and fast SATA drives are still a lot more expensive than pen drives especially when the large capacity is not really needed.

Its a shame these kind of things are not easier to make yourself I am just going round in circles looking for circuit diagrams related to IDE ports.