Gaming Anyway to convert USB to IDE?

[osaka35]

If you don't want to spend loads of money, you could get a live cd and just use those instead of bothering with HDDs. Then just use USB for storage. Depends on what you want to do though, I guess. I want to say i recall someone bothering to turn some old windows into live cds, but I can't recall.

 

[Dogmander25]

Well whatever. I guess I can CF cards instead. And fyi heres the specs of the build I'm working on.
x1 ASUS A7NBX Motherboard
x1 ATI Radeon from 2001
x1 3COM 10/100 ethernet card
x1 card with printer port
x1 Sound Blaster card from a old dell pc
x1 ATI Rage 128 from old iMac
x1 idk the name port (used for old mice)
x1 POWERMAX 400W Power Supply
x1 Kingston 512MB RAM
x1 Western Digital 20.4GB HDD
x2 CD drives from another old dell pc
So yeah thats it. (I didn't include the case. I forget the name of it.)

 

[Futurdreamz]

Honestly You're better off just using a Virtual Machine for every OS on your main PC. Then you can also emulate Mac OS and every other OS under the sun.

 

[FAST6191]

Edit. Not sure why we are replying to a weeks old thread like this but it is what it is I guess.

For the record CF basically is IDE, just in flash memory form. Its write speed and IOPS are usually terrible but it was a nice way to get SSD like performance before SSD prices dropped.

Anyway I am not sure if I have ever seen one to convert USB into IDE, I might have but it would have been in one of those rare and silly parts for industrial and specialist uses websites if so.

If you can take USB2.0 speeds for it (around 30 megs a second max and a decent chunk of CPU to do so) then even if your motherboard does not support booting from USB you can chain load/jump load and boot from a CD/floppy/whatever and immediately dump you onto the USB to load the OS proper. I mostly only did it to fiddle with linux on machines with dead DVD drives or something (I carried on with burned discs for far longer than was probably sensible) but does allow you to get things booted. Old but sort of what I used to do
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822/boot-from-a-usb-drive-even-if-your-bios-wont-let-you/

 

[Zenzirouj]

I'd third the virtual machine suggestion if you're looking to experiment with a lot of different setups. If you want to build them physically, finding cheap old drives is probably the next best thing. I'm not sure where those go to die these days, but maybe a library or school would have some chucked in a closet somewhere.

 

[Futurdreamz]

I had gotten a bunch of them from computers given to me by relatives not willing to pay the eWaste charge, but I just smashed the drives because they had personal information and I wasn't going to go try secure wiping them.

 

[Monty Kensicle]

I had gotten a bunch of them from computers given to me by relatives not willing to pay the eWaste charge, but I just smashed the drives because they had personal information and I wasn't going to go try secure wiping them.

That was kinda dumb, it's really easy to secure wipe drives.

 

[nyteshade]

I'm think of getting a bunch of old late 90's and/or early 2000's pc's and put them in my basement to play around wit them and I was wondering if I could convert USB to IDE so I could buy a bunch of 1 or 2GB usb sticks and use them as hard disks. Can I do that?

Don’t know if it will work but I ordered one.
Mini USB to Mini 2.5" IDE (Female) Hard Drive Adapter
Amazon product B004BWRYBG

I cannot post links yet.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Don’t know if it will work but I ordered one.
Mini USB to Mini 2.5" IDE (Female) Hard Drive Adapter
Amazon product B004BWRYBG

I cannot post links yet.

A) This is a 5 year old thread, please don't bump very old threads.

B) Once again, that's not what the OP wanted. He wanted to plug a USB drive into an IDE port, which is not something that exists.