News Enthusiast Builds DIY 2.5 Inch IDE SSD for Retro PCs

[Admin]

Enthusiast builds custom SSD to replace his 2.5-inch IDE hard drive.

Enthusiast Builds DIY 2.5 Inch IDE SSD for Retro PCs : Read more

 

[bolweval]

Easy peezy, hold my beer.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Impressive achievement. Although I'm a bit confused he didn't use one of the many pata to sata adapters.

 

[InvalidError]

Impressive achievement. Although I'm a bit confused he didn't use one of the many pata to sata adapters.

How would you fit that in a laptop's 2.5" bay that is barely large enough to fit the 2.5" SSD itself?

Since 2.5" PATA drives are slower than today's SD cards, a more convenient way would have been to use an SD-to-PATA adapter, though SD cards may not like the write load as a system drive.

 

[Friesiansam]

How would you fit that in a laptop's 2.5" bay that is barely large enough to fit the 2.5" SSD itself?

Since 2.5" PATA drives are slower than today's SD cards, a more convenient way would have been to use an SD-to-PATA adapter, though SD cards may not like the write load as a system drive.

I strongly suspect Dosdude1 did this for fun, just because he could. He was probably not to bothered about it being practical, or really making any sense.

 

[elfenix]

Impressive achievement. Although I'm a bit confused he didn't use one of the many pata to sata adapters.

But why, some say, build a new PATA SSD? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 95 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

 

[eyesroll]

SATA SSDs are plentiful and PATA->SATA adapters exist. I have several in my drawer right now that werw had from Aliexpress for a couple bucks each, one of which was in the past used yo revive an old fruity G4 iMac. Modding the SSD is completely unnecessary unless you just don't want to see the tiny adapter stuck to the back of the SSD? Why?

 

[gggplaya]

We actually need these for some old laptops we have at work, Dell D510's I think with windows XP on them. We keep them alive for old applications that we have. I just bought new batteries for them last year, but the HDD's are incredibly slow.

 

[Stealthdeburgo]

Enthusiast builds custom SSD to replace his 2.5-inch IDE hard drive.

Enthusiast Builds DIY 2.5 Inch IDE SSD for Retro PCs : Read more

I wonder how he gets around the SSD trim command being Windows XP does not support it. With out the trim command, the SSD will balloon with untrimmed data plus it will shorten the SSD's life span.

 

[eyesroll]

I wonder how he gets around the SSD trim command being Windows XP does not support it. With out the trim command, the SSD will balloon with untrimmed data plus it will shorten the SSD's life span.

Can't speak for him, but when I use SSDs on systems without trim I typically leave 10-15% unformatted and occasionally boot into a different system to do a trim. However at least for me the systems I have used it on don't fill up or do a lot if writes in general so typically it isn't an issue, but there are certainly offline maintenances you can do if needed.

 

[DingusDog]

Cool but you could just an get IDE to SATA adapter...

 

[InvalidError]

SATA SSDs are plentiful and PATA->SATA adapters exist. I have several in my drawer right now that werw had from Aliexpress for a couple bucks each, one of which was in the past used yo revive an old fruity G4 iMac. Modding the SSD is completely unnecessary unless you just don't want to see the tiny adapter stuck to the back of the SSD? Why?

There is no room to fit a SATA-to-PATA adapter in laptops.

 

[atomicWAR]

Nice work/neat trick. I always love a random tech project!

 

[JTWrenn]

We actually need these for some old laptops we have at work, Dell D510's I think with windows XP on them. We keep them alive for old applications that we have. I just bought new batteries for them last year, but the HDD's are incredibly slow.

Wouldn't virtualization make a whole lot more sense?

 

[mac_angel]

if he tries to bring back the 4 pin molex, man.... so much I can't say on a public forum with rules, lol.

 

[TerryLaze]

There is no room to fit a SATA-to-PATA adapter in laptops.

Have you ever opened an SSD drive?!
They are mostly air just to stick with traditional sizes.
You can use the PCB of the SSD with an pata adapter and still have more then half the trapdoor space empty.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/2

120 + 250Gb...

 

[expired56k]

Not sure how this is anything new. PATA SSD have existed for enterprise and industrial use for well over a decade. Only downside was high cost for a niche device. Given the PATA transfer speed it would be fine to also use a CF card and an adapter but I agree that for a retro or specialized setup it's much more reliable to use a native drive than some adapter.

 

[InvalidError]

Have you ever opened an SSD drive?!
They are mostly air just to stick with traditional sizes.

If you leave those flopping around in the HDD bay, it'll only be a matter of time before the everyday jostling of a laptop shakes one of the interfaces loose. Not a problem if you were going to McGuyver things in the first place, can be a bit of a problem if you want a reliable drop-in replacement without having to make custom parts to hold stuff securely in place.

 

[TerryLaze]

If you leave those flopping around in the HDD bay, it'll only be a matter of time before the everyday jostling of a laptop shakes one of the interfaces loose. Not a problem if you were going to McGuyver things in the first place, can be a bit of a problem if you want a reliable drop-in replacement without having to make custom parts to hold stuff securely in place.

I doubt anybody is actually carrying around a RETRO laptop.
But if you want to secure it you can just use a nice fat thermal pad that will stick to the bottom of the trapdoor and keep everything in place.
Heck, put one on each side and sandwich that ssd in place.

 

[TheCDW]

How would you fit that in a laptop's 2.5" bay that is barely large enough to fit the 2.5" SSD itself?

Since 2.5" PATA drives are slower than today's SD cards, a more convenient way would have been to use an SD-to-PATA adapter, though SD cards may not like the write load as a system drive.

By using either a 1.8" or mSATA drive. Both of which fit inside the SATA to PATA adapter in a 2.5" form factor.

 

[InvalidError]

I doubt anybody is actually carrying around a RETRO laptop.

I'd imagine those are pretty common in industrial environments where old computers are needed to interface with 20+ years old equipment and software that doesn't play nice with modern computers and OSes. Cheaper to maintain a fleet of ancient laptops to be deployed as needed than upgrade production machinery that still gets the job done and is probably much easier to maintain than any modern over-complicated DRM-infested replacement.

 

[Nikolay Mihaylov]

Easiest would have been to use CompactFlash. That's essentially IDE.