StarTech IDE to SATA Converter Review - Use SATA HDD ODD and SSD with Retro PC 

Damn, I'm not sure what happened, but I forgot to add the BIOS screenshots to show Master / Slave / Cable Select in action. I have uploaded them here: i.imgur.com/Iv9LWhC.png i.imgur.com/DbrEEa7.png

For real though how great are Startech? They make everything and have consistently high standards. What a bunch of heroes.

Ut oh looks like the BIOS screenshots for the primary/secondary/CS got missed, but I still believe you!

As someone who has a ton of old computers, I thank the Gods daily for the existance of your channel!

My experience with the two adapters was that the no name adapter's controller slowed down dramatically over time as the drive filled up (I would assume weird timing issues with the SSD so your experience may vary), where as the StarTech's continued to work about as well as expected with the same drive.

I did a bunch of testing a couple years back with these cards and The Startech is worth every cent. As others have mentioned if you are into modding old game consoles, OG Xbox especially, these are amazing, with the no name the Xbox would boot properly about half the time when I tested it on a couple different models. In Windows 98 I noticed on some motherboards the no name adapter would work well, other than it being a little slower, but on some chipsets, can't remember which ones, I would have a lot of blue screens or very slow boot up, etc. Great video as usual.

I love StarTech products. They always seem to have whatever obscure card, converter or connector I need. So yeah, I would be inclined to get their SATA to IDE adapter even if the no name version is just fine, if only to help them make money and continue existing. That, and red PCBs are just pretty.

Hi Phil, nice to see both of these adapters had a similar performance. Months ago I needed a couple and the startech were out of stock so I order two different no name ones and one of the two had the pins exposed, the second unit had some black foam but very thin... I used the one that looked the best and hotglued it to the back of a hot swap SATA bay so now I can use on my old S462 Athlon SATA drives. I will look for these Startech ones again they look way better built. Thanks.

Thanks Phil. Another super Friday short. Your video from a few years ago on the various media options for our retro PC’s was very good and helped me a lot. I am using 6 StarTech ide adapters for my SSD’s. They were much more expensive, but they work very well. I hook these up via a raid controller on the PCI bus. The SATA connection tends to be the loosest link so once attached the ide cable link is not a problem. I have recently bought some m.2 encloses (I have yet to try them out) that have a a 2.5” ide connector, along with a 40 way IDE 2.5 inch drive adapter cable which converts it to regular ide. This a cheaper way of implementing an m.2 SSD rather than a regular SSD drive and StarTech adapter, and the electronics required for the conversion is much simpler, so it could be very effective. I haven’t bought the m.2 drive yet for a test but it looks like a good solution.

By the way, on top of the adapters you slot in on the hard disk and optical drives, there's also adapters that slot in to the mobo and can turn 1 IDE port into 2 SATA ports! One such adapter is the Lindy 51024, with two JMicron JMH330 controllers. Does even UDMA-6 at 133MB/s! Do check them out, they're insanely economical, and for two hdd-side adapters, you can simply slot in one mobo-side adapter and save up on both money and the need to stock on things like IDE adapters and Molex cabling.

I would put the tape on the hard drive, it would stick better than over the pins of the adapters themselves. But that's just me :)

Great Video, super useful. I am cleaning up my dads old AMD 3200+ pc, i remember helping him build it. However, need one of these adapters. This video has helped me restore my late fathers PC, which still comes with the original Win98SE installation from back in the day! Thanks Phil!

As for compatibility I've been using that same Startech adapter in PowerMac G4 systems and even an original Xbox. Works great in both!

Philday converts my OK day into a GREAT day!

I use these adapters to replace old failing IDE HDDs in original Xboxes. I have both that green one and the startech one. The green one will often take so long to initialize that an Xbox won't recognize there's a drive in the system. They also go offline when the Xbox is rebooted every time. Mine did come with double-sided sticky foam on the pcb to adhere/insulate from the drive chassis, at least. The startech one doesn't have any of the slow init issues and works great, I put some double-sided tape on that one too. I almost exclusively use them with 2TB HDDs.

Love startech kit. Got a few of these adapters from them and never had a problem. Their cables too are brilliant.

StarTech gear is more expensive than the no name stuff but their quality and performance is always top notch. I've done IT jobs at corporations and StarTech was always where they would source any adapters or obscure pieces of tech that were needed.

You're awesome Phil Thanks a bunch For the Super informative Video

I've been using a much older StarTech SATA2IDE connector for over 10 years. I plugged it into my IDE2USB cable so that I can connect SATA drives to USB2.0 and I get 50Mbps rates out of it, as expected, which was actually pretty good performance for notebook SATA drives back then.

I am installing Mechwarrior 2 3DFX on a Socket A Semprom 3300+ (Same as Athlon XP 3200+) with DGVoodoo DLLs on a SATA SSD and the StarTech adapter as I watch this video. 😁 I use the StarTech adapter because I cannot easily find the no-name adapter WITH the Master/Slave jumper. But I can get them at a good price so I don't mind. Thanks for all your retro videos, Phil! They have been a GREAT help.

Startech has a load of interesting and sometimes obscure tech.

Thanks Phil! I recently came across a couple of these kind of adapters but my choice was very easy since only one of the two worked with my configuration. Now I don't feel like I need to evaluate any further to look for more differences. The one I settled on is very similar to the Startech one you've got but not identical.

Ive been using the little black enclosed StarTech adaptor that plugs into the motherboard and uses SATA cable. Works great, no complaints and I prefer the SATA cables, but means you cant have a slave drive on the channel.

I work in the metro system of a major european capital and we are using those no-name adapters to retrofit reliable SSD's to all kinds of old point of service computers to make them more reliable than the old mechanical drives we have and I can say the no name works very well, we haven't had any issues

I usually put thick double-sided foam tape between these adapters and the hard drives. It insulates the pins and prevents them from flexing or pulling out easily.

😁 today I was the first! I have two of those non branded adapters and they work really well on every PC i Put ir on. I think that on these old PCs you dont need something Faster than that. Thanks for the vídeo Phill. 👍

I've done my own experimenting with the startech adapter vs the no-name - and the startech adapters are completely worth the extra cost IMO. Not only have i not found a generic adapter that works with the OG Xbox, many generics also take up both master and slave settings (or have no way to set a drive to slave, which equates to the same thing) meaning if you use it in a retro PC then you get only one drive per bus, quite a problem.

I'm going to stick with using the StarTech adapter as it has shown to be reliable for me. I've had issues with the no name ones not working reliably with fast SSDs. I occasionally get read/write errors on the drives.

I like the Startech PATA2SATA3 adapter. It has a plastic enclosure, and plugs straight into the motherboard. No need for an ugly IDE cable, and no risk of a short circuit.

I've noticed with an og xbox and an ide modded dreamcast, although these are consoles and not retro pcs, the startech adapter loads games so much faster especially if there's lots of little files in comparison to the no name adapter (which looks identical to the one in the video) and also it's so much more reliable as well. Boot times were always consistently quicker with the og xbox using the startech adapter and it never had the error code 7 or 8 (no hdd/hdd timeout error for the xbox) unlike the no name adapter which had this problem once in a while turning on the xbox (wasn't an everyday thing but a once a month thing and it'd still work just by turning the xbox off and back on again, but it's annoying). It's also not just a one off bad no name adapter, I had 3 and I have a few more startech adapters and it's the same story for all of them. I hope this bit of info also helps out others, as the saying goes, you pay for something cheap, you pay it twice and I'd much rather get the good startech adapters any day of the week as opposed to the no name adapter. Although it'll probably affect a pc less, just get the startech adapter, save the headaches and shave the load times.

Man these designs are a bit careless on the short circuit issue. I shorted an sd to ide adapter with the PC case, I even cought it on video in a scary moment. Learned my lesson, I put tape under all of them now.

Just an idea for you Phil, I came across some old Dell adapters that allow you to use 1.8 micro drives inside of a 2.5 PATA adapter. It’s a PATA drive shell with a little ribbon cable adapter to go from the micro drive to the PATA interface. Might be something interesting to make a video about.

I picked 2 compact adapters that had a M/S jumper. Is still have a supply of IDE drives that I take care of so these are just in case. I have had drives fail, but that was because they were used in Arcade games, or were used by other businesses. Generally if IDE drives have a power saving measures applied they will last alot longer. I found the drives that get hotter are sata spinners in my case, even if data is not being accessed.

I bought the ones being sold as cerrexian or something like that. They have a master/slave jumper that is just pin 28 grounded or not grounded as seen by the adapter drive circuit. Like many have figured out, who bought any of these adapters, is how well they stay connected. They can have a real chance of coming out of the sata device real easy if not secured. Then there is the much taller footprint of some of these.

I really need some of these. I haven't been playing around as much with my old hardware because it's just a pain to get sata drivers slipped in to what I need.

I've had a few things around my own lab that needed the backs of the PCBs taped up. I actually used the liquid version of electrical tape - looks better and works just as good. BTW I love the way you say "Mega boytes" :D

I like that the startech is thinner. Might have to try it out

I only use the StarTech in my modded OG XBOXes. Not only do I not want to chance it with a generic part, especially with capacitors that can fail, its smaller and fits better.

I've had mixed results with the no-name in some builds I've done in the last few years. I do remember having put tape on some of them. I think I am using one in my personal Win98 machine though! In particular, my friend had trouble with the no-name in an iMac G4, but the StarTech did work for him, so I think compatibility is probably overall way better with the StarTech.

I had one of those green ones smoke. The soldering was terrible and there were bridges all over the board. I sent it back and got another one and it looked just as bad so I didn't try using it. Returned that one and got the StarTech and have purchased two more since. They work great.

My Startech adapter was like 25€ many many years ago. They have been around for a while. :)

Muy interesantes ambos aparatos. Exelente trabajo!

And I have yet a different IDE2SATA adapter. My brother gave me a couple that were used for process control systems, and they take SATA laptop (2.5") drives instead, and have a frame that fits into a PATA/IDE 3.5" drive bay (screw holes in the same locations). Of course I don't have a system to test them in at the moment,

First time hearing about these so thank you. Not having the large capacitors on the Startech would be a + in the long term?

My experience with the no name adapters (i tried two of them) on an iMac G3 2001 was a boot delay of about 40 seconds, with the Startech adapter there is no delay.

The reason I've heard about the StarTech is the Xbox Modig scene. The StarTech works with the xbox whilst the noname don't (or is a gamble). so yeah, speed matters but compatibility is king here.

I use the startech, I have had a few issues with optical drives.

I use IDE hard drives and an optical drive in the first place in my windows 98/XP pc and i am satisfied with it. It has two magnetic drives one for operating systems and one for long term storage.if you do not give any physical shocks to them,they will work pretty well for a long time,but because of that physical shock factor,SSD drives are much better choice for portable devices.

i have the first one. works fine.

I have a really old adapter encased in plastic that can actually work both ways (separate SATA connector for input or output). I haven't tested it in years, ever since I used it in an upgraded system. I wondered about TRIM but after googling it seems there are even DOS programs that can send TRIMcommands to an SSD. I'm gonna try an SSD on my Pentium system later on.

love it love it love it

Thank you for your videos and your sharing your knowledge for supporting retro hardware and software. I would like to ask for confirmation whether SSD's can be safely used eith Windows 98 (e.g. via such an adapter) and Windows XP. Do we only have to pay attention to partition alignment or is there something else influencing lifespan, please ? (-:

no surprise that the StarTech is better all around. it "just works" and there are no unpleasant surprises like with the generic adapter. the StarTech uses a superior Marvell chipset, which seems to be the key difference between the two. i have been using the StarTech for years, and it's the only IDE-to-SATA adapter i trust. worth every penny.

I’ve been running a cheap dram ssd in my dual pentium iii dell precision and the startech adapter has been extremely fast and reliable

I remember years ago people reorted problems with the Marvell adapter chips (i think on the MSFN forum), thats’s why I’ve avoided them. Bought some no name adapters with this DOT or something chip and had problems with CD-ROMs. Finally bought a Jmicron JM20330 chip and this one works without problems.

Did you try the removing the jumper on the no-name? it might have cable select when no jumper mode is set.

I have 2 of each and could not get 2 hard drives to be shown as master and slave. The no name worked perfect on a DVD drive and not so well with a hard drive. I know there is 1 drive per sata port and I'm wondering if that is why I can't get 2 of these "HDD or SSD" to show together in bios as Ma and Sl. I have 1 WD 10k V Raptor that runs very well with the Star Tech adapter. I love playing around with this Tech!

What's up Phil!

I've never had any problems with the cheap ones. For the exposed pins on the back, I cut out a piece of plastic from some packaging and stuck it on with double sided foam tape.

If you're going to go with the no-name ones be wary, I've had a few that have had traces burn up on the PCB, potential concern, only happened on two so may just have been mfg defect in the copper trace causing high resistance but something to consider with these devices, otherwise they work great.

I wonder whats the drive capacity limit on these adapters, it would be great to use again my external Medea Videodrive Raid with modern disks!

I'm using the no name brand one in my win98se PC. I'm only using it with a laptop hard drive though. It works well. I may get the startech one thought.

On the noname adapter, could it be that taking off the jumper entirely implies Cable Select?

Did you try CS with no jumper at all on the no-name adapter?

I have 2 Noname adapters and I found if I use them as Master and Slave at the same cable sometimes the PC doesn't want to boot because can't recognize which is master and slave, sometimes only the master drive appears in the bios and windows. I've tested different cables and the cables are fine, just the Chinese adapters sometimes don't work properly.

are there double ide sata converters? in order to double the bandwidth for an ssd? the bus sees it as a raid, right? or a sata card on pci is more efficient?

When I was replacing the original Xbox's hard drive I needed to use the Startech adapter for the initial cloning. For some reason the no-namebrand adapter wouldn't take on the role of slave (necessary for the cloning process). After the cloning was done the Xbox was able to use the no-namebrand adapter (in the master role) without any problems. Maybe mine was defective somehow (shrug) but it doesn't seem to comunicate slave status to my xbox. In case anyone is infamiliar/wondering, the original Xbox's hard drive is encrypted with (I believe) console specific keys so just plugging both drives in and copying the files isn't an option.

Thanks! maybe you can do more test with some DOM (disk on module) units. Bye!

The no name adapter might go into CS mode when no jumper is attached?

Own both ... syartech is mot ideal if yiur using on o g xbox to concert drive from ide to sata due to space extra power cable takes up

the startech one is the best quality one compared to others, i may get a startech sata to ide for a SSD to go in my pentium iii reverse sleeper win98 rig

I have a Q.... do any of these qoek with UDMA (66-100-133) using the 80p connector cable as opposed to the 40p? I'm assuming since you got 118ish speeds, they DO run UDMA 133, correct?

I'm low income, and I still try to pony up for the Star*tech versions of things like this whenever I can. I have some of their stuff from well over a decade ago, and it's still working fine, while other no-name stuff I bought has proven unreliable or just not as flexible overall. In my view, the premium is worth it because I'm more likely to *still* be using it 5, 10, or even 20 years from now.

i've been testing 44 pin ide to msata adapters and had interesting results. my powerbook g4 titanium boots fine with a 256 gb nvme ssd. so does a dell d600 with a pentium m. but attach it to a hp omnibook with a pentium 3. and it acts like it has bad ram. unplug ssd but not adapater and it does post. attach a 120gb 44 pin hdd. and it also works. so no size limit. i'd definitely be interested into seeing some videos on that/

i use the no name adapter on OG Xbox. No issues.

I've been using adapters like this for years. Startech makes great tech, no doubt. However for this particular type of adapter, unless you really need/want the cable select or Berg jack, Startech doesn't have the advantage. Performance is margin of error difference and the price factor is important. Also, I like the socket on the IDE connector much better. Adding a spacer on the back to prevent direct drive contact with the pins is trivial.

I bought one of these for my OG XBOX, weirdly hard to get in AUS, cheapest I could find was on eBay and from the UK.

I wonder what happens if the jumper is NOT set on the generic card? It could be that if the unbranded card has no jumper, it just sets the CS option?

Component legs poke through electrical tape verry easily so I recommend to cut down all legs as far as possible first then covering them with uv epoxy or regular epoxy. There is little to no chance to make repairs so solder access is not needed.

I'm having problems with a no name I don't think it has jumpers, everything works fine I copy WIN98 folder fine but SETUP wont run. I'm about to try it on an intel 845 chipset see if it makes a difference. EDIT: Okay this is one of those HXSP-0908 adapter and i tried it on the 845 and it worked fine but the no DMA thing and the system would freeze after enabling not sure if its worth messing around with further Thanks Phil your channel is literally a god level resource

my laptop cd drive slot is ide so i can not by a caddy for my laptop becouse most of caddys are come with sata to sata conection if you ny idea to add extra storage

For protecting possible shorts of the soldered pins I am using the (Pattex) Heißklebe Pistole 🔫

Thank You for the test, now my Amiga can run Crysis in 4k. 🤣 I am curious if the Cable Select can be achieved by removing the Jumper? Maybe Cable Select is the default mode? Retro greetings from Germany.

I have the no name in the mail now. Im hoping it will fix issues i have been having with cd rom drives on my win 98 machine. My theory is a sata drive will perfom better? I hope. Well it came and did not help with what i was hoping it would. But it allowed me to add an ssd to my 98 machine with great results.

I have one "no name" SATA adapter and it definitely doesn't work with SSDs. I've tried two brands of SSDs (64Gb and 128Gb) with it and each time I install Windows XP first stage install succeeds but upon the first reboot the NT kernel crashes (ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce2). Can someone confirm that the Startech or the Lindy adapter that was mentioned by someone here do work with off the shelf SSDs and XP? PATA SSDs are quite expensive.

Used the StarTech one for a modded original xbox as it was the only adapter that worked. Cheapo ones just didnt work properly. I think StarTech is far more compatible with hardware.

Is there difference on speed using CS instead of master/slave? IIRC only CS can use UDMA and reach higher speeds (Probably it's not UDMA, I haven't use IDE cables since like 2006, but I remember that I had to use CS to allow my HDD to be faster than Master/Slave configuration)

I use similiar IDE to SATA Converter from StarTech, but mine is branded as renkforce (which i think is a brand from Conrad Electronic?). It works for the most part and I too think the missing plastic housing is a bit of a flaw, because i have bended the pins on some of them. However regarding it working on SATA optical drives: on some older sata drives from around 2008 it worked mostly fine, but on some newer sata optical drives that have things like mdisc and other modern support, sometimes the computer would just freeze if i tried to read or install something from them. For using it on a SSD, is fine though, i had no problems.

On the StarTech, the jumpers for master/slave/cable, what's "ACD"?

i would like to see the comparison to an actual ssd. if i put this adapter into an old laptop, will it speed it up - how does e.g. win 10 perform? hardly anyone uses win98 any more ^^ - thanks. good video

2:46 I sometimes use hotglue to cover the pins.

StarTech & Japanese SATA-TR2535 (2.5 SATA to 3.5 IDE) are the best ones that I've used before. I know of one more I've used that just as good as the StarTech one but I don't know that it's name is, I think it used some of the same parts too.

YMMV, but I've had the green ones I got killed two large SSDs dead and corrupted data on smaller SSDs. These might work OK with hard disks, but don't risk your SSDs. The StarTech is worth it.

at 3:40 I think you missed to put in the screen capture

I use that Startech in my OG Xbox lol

The Startech is just a sticker on an item made by somebody else, right? I've had the same results with green vs red adapter, but my red one doesn't have the Startech sticker. Other adapters I tried didn't work with my Plextor IDE ODD.

Would be nice to see 1998 benchmarks - K6-2 vs Celeron vs Pentium 2 and Voodoo 2 vs TNT1 vs Banshee :)

Does performance really matter so much, given the slowest ssds will run laps around any hdd and the hdds back then were 5400rpm at best?

What is the Best hard drive replacement solution for a 1998 computer that supports a 30gb hard drive ? ( CF card, SSD, Sata hard drive, other )

Was DMA automagic? Otherwise the windows ME install might make more of a difference because DMA is enabled by default