Question Best hard drive docking for IDE SATA 2.5 and 3.5

Mar 14, 2023
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I have to find some information on my old hard drives, but going through all the reviews of positive and negative is driving me nuts! The hard drives are from laptops and desk tops. With SAS/SATA/IDE connections 2.5 and 3.5, therefore, it's got to be hopefully universal. I read peoples reviews on the cheaper end of the market and I guess their negative write up is in responses are probably buying cheap? It's a minefield out there. If it cost about £100 that is fine, that must be about the midway price for an idiot like me to afford. If it is more, we could go to it possibly? Just want to plug in and retrieve if possible. It's all Windows and some Linux. Any info would be helpful, as I have too many to go through, and it would cost an arm and a leg to pay someone.
Thanks for reading and hopefully some help
 
There's no single solution that you can plug any hard drive into because the connectors are physically present where each other would be... so unless you have a 4D machine you can't have all three connections in at the same time. You'd have to get separate docking stations for each type, although I believe you can plug a SATA drive into a SAS connector.
 
Mar 14, 2023
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I know it will be individual. I have found one that we have ordered today. It does all the three different types of connections, which is what I was stressing about. Hopefully stress over until it comes and I find out the hard drives can't be accesed! We will see. Thank you
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
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I note that you have purchased a unit that does NOT say it can handle SAS drives. That was my reservation when first I read your post. Systems to handle both IDE and SATA drives of the two sizes do exist, as you have found. And one with a USB 3.2 interface is a good idea now as long as you have such a port on your machine. (By the way, the naming of USB systems has changed a few times. This unit is now called a USB 3.2 Gen1 unit, capable of data transfer rates up to 5 Gb/s, although the individual HDD's may not move data that fast.) A small reminder that it IS important to use the small "power brick" included with this unit to provide power to the HDD's attached. A USB 3.2 port cannot provide that much power.