Options for PATA SSD

Pickers · 23 Jul 2017 at 21:06

Hey all,
I was toying with the idea of tinkering with my old dell Inspiron 5100 from 2004.

One thing I considered was an SSD, but as it's a PATA I heard that you can get an mSATA to IDE converter card that may fit in the 2.5 inch drive bay...
I can find some from HK for a couple of quid, or a more pricy affair (£22 ish) for a "LINDY mSATA SSD to 2.5 Inch IDE Drive Adapter"

Anyone got any thoughts on this? Don't want to spend a fortune but if the cheapy affair won't work it's no good

Anyone got any experience of using this method to SSD an old system?

Quartz · 23 Jul 2017 at 21:52

Sorry, is the SSD PATA or the motherboard PATA? If the latter, just get a SATA PCIE card.

Pickers · 23 Jul 2017 at 22:14

The motherboard is PATA... It's an Inspiron laptop, so pcie card not an option :/

Quartz · 23 Jul 2017 at 22:45

Can you even fit the converter kit into the laptop? You can get PATA SSDs. 128 GB seems to be the biggest.

Pickers · 24 Jul 2017 at 09:16

That's what I was wondering - wondered if anyone had experience with that kind of converter.
Pata ssds are (as I understand) not that great and also work out potentially more expensive...

It seems you can get a sata to ide 44pin converter... A bit of butchering on a sata I or II SSD second hand drive and I might be able to get it to fit... For less ££

iBSOD · 24 Jul 2017 at 11:36

Lycom ST-173-7 is about £14

Pickers · 24 Jul 2017 at 12:18

iBSOD said:
Lycom ST-173-7 is about £14

Nice - what's it like? Any idea??

iBSOD · 24 Jul 2017 at 12:43

Pickers said:
Nice - what's it like? Any idea??

It's seems to be well reviewed after a quick google. I'm assuming you'll be running a modern os on the laptop for trim support

Pickers · 24 Jul 2017 at 12:49

I don't think so - XP. But at the moment the cost of delivery on that item and then the msata drive itself takes the cost above that of a "little tinker" :/

Pickers · 26 Jul 2017 at 09:15

Can anyone help with TRIM info? Seems not all adaptors transfer trim commands which kind of makes them useless?!?

Deleted member 138126 · 26 Jul 2017 at 12:55

You have ZERO chance of Trim working. For starters, XP doesn't even know about it; you are far too many layers removed. Not having TRIM is far from useless though. TRIM is only needed under benchmark conditions, where a drive is being thrashed within an inch of its life (something you will not be doing with your 13 year old laptop). On the other hand, IDE has 167 MBps theoretical maximum bandwidth (assuming your laptop supports UltraDMA 7), so your absolute ideal situation is you get a quarter of the speed of SATA. My advice, throw that laptop in the bin, and put the money you were planning to spend towards a slightly more modern, used one. There are laptops being sold all the time on the MM (I just sold an *extremely* nice one for £350).

Pickers · 26 Jul 2017 at 14:03

I have an Inspiron 7559, so not looking for a workable laptop, just a project to play with lubuntu and/or retro games.

The current HDD is a 4200rpm 20gig so was looking for a way to overcome this bottleneck

Armageus · 26 Jul 2017 at 14:13

Rather than looking at M2 or SATA adapters, might be worth looking at PATA->Compact Flash adapters (which are dirt cheap), or PATA to SD Card adapters (of which looks like there are some for £12.99 or so), and a reasonable CF or SD Card (e.g. one from a respected brand with a decentish transfer rate). Since it's an old PC 16GB/32GB/64GB should all be usable and available for reasonable price (and can be reused for something else afterwards).

Alternatively you can still get industrial SSDs in 2.5 PATA - have a look for Disk-On-Modules (DOM), but you will likely be looking at £30-40 for a 16GB or so module.

Pickers · 26 Jul 2017 at 14:23

Oh hadn't thought of that.. does that also have trim issues??

Armageus · 26 Jul 2017 at 14:33

Pickers said:
Oh hadn't thought of that.. does that also have trim issues??

Even less chance of TRIM being supported by the adapters, but as already mention TRIM is not supported on XP anyway. Industrial DOM may have their own Garbage collection that negates the need for trim, but equally you probably have no way of knowing.

In 99% of cases however, I would state that the reliance on TRIM was overstated - unless you are regularly filling a drive to capacity with small files, then deleting them all, then going again, you don't need to worry about TRIM.

Pickers · 26 Jul 2017 at 14:44

Intriguing... They are pennies on eBay, but has no way to mount inside the laptop 2.5" bay unless you get one in a 2.5" drive type case which is much more expensive (the del l uses a slide out cartridge type design)... Will keep hunting

Pickers · 29 Jul 2017 at 13:34

That was fun! Got an ide to CF converter for £2 and it works! However the speed does seem limited - apparently the converter acts like an ata33, which seems to mean that the CF card is slower than the mechanical IDE due to this bottleneck. Not sure what (if any) adapters support higher speeds...

Mel_P · 1 Aug 2017 at 18:06

This startech device works for me - SATA SSD on an old motherboard

https://www.startech.com/uk/HDD/Adapters/Bi-Directional-SATA-IDE-Adapter-Converter~PATA2SATA3

Tom B · 1 Aug 2017 at 21:23

Not sure what you're planning to do with the system but you'll be a lot better off using a lightweight Linux distro/desktop environment than XP. It'll also support TRIM correctly.

Options for PATA SSD

Deleted member 138126

Deleted member 138126