d8b Forum

Hi All;
Looking ti get a relyable IDE to SATA Convertor/Adaptor. I am looking at moving to SSD from Mechanical Hard Drives.

Does anyone use these and do yiu have a relyable supplier?

I have sevarl SSD drives currently (32gB, 80GB and 120GB) and they work well .

I tried the Compact Flash Route and could never get it to work. My d8b's are the older 166Mhz CPU and that doesn't work, but I could never get it working on my HDR's as an Internal or External Drive. I know several have the Internal CF working, and i beleive someone has it working as removalble Hard drive. If I could get guideance with the CF route that may prove a better way, I just received 9 Li Lian RH-58 Caddies so I want to us ethem.

Thanks as always.

Bruce

Hi Bruce,
I actually have some lying around. PM me your address and I'll send you one.

Have a blessed day,
Mike W.

When people started using SSDs in their HDRs, I figured I should give it a try myself. I just went to my friendly local Micro Center store and got a PATA-to-SATA adapter for about $10. No recognizable brand name, but it worked. I didn't put it through the sort of lengthy testing that Mackie did when choosing a drive to use in manufacturing, but I never had a glitch with it.

If you'd feel better with a reliable brand name adapter, Startech https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2sat25 makes a couple that wouldn't cause me any need to worry.

The issue that you might run into is similar to that with hard drives - you can't find one small enough to be economical.

I don't know if you can make what appears to the operating system as multiple disk drives out of one SSD as apparently the floppy emulation with flash memory cards can do, but nobody that I know has ever had success in getting the HDR (or d8b for that matter - same OS core) to recognize multiple partitions. When I tried the SSD, I got a 120 GB drive (also really cheap at Micro Center) but those seem to have gone the way of the dodo. Since the OS doesn't know how to address more than 130 GB, unless you can still find small SSDs, you'll be buying lots more memory than you can actually use.

By the way, I didn't find any significant improvement in speed, nor did I really feel the need for it, when using the SSD. It's one less noisemaker, but my recorder is located where its mechanical noise isn't a problem for me. After a bit of fooling around, I swapped out the SSD (and put it in a laptop computer) with a SATA hard drive. At the time, SATA drive sizes were soaring, so I could buy new 120 GB drives for under $20, and, being an analog curmudgeon, somehow feel more confident in a mechanical drive that I can hear odd noises from when it's getting ready to fail than in a dead silent (alive or dead) SSD. Your mileage may, and probably will differ.

Hey Mike;
Thanks for your insight.
I have one SSD that works really well and I have never, so far, had an isssue. Yes there is someting to hearing the hard drive shurn, and seeing the Red LED flash from time to time. Gives one confidence that something is happening.
The SSD offers no noise and no flashing LED. But.... It hasn't let me down Yet!.
I'm just looking for other ways, and suppliers, to make sure I can get stuff.
More about exoerimenting than staying alive.
There is a guy in here somewhere, who managed to get a Compact Flash card working as an external drive! I have had no luck there.
The CF also, in my expereince, will not work on a 166 motherboard. It may, but I can't get it to work.
The shipping to Canada is betwen $14.00 and 29.00! Sucks to be Canadian for that reason!

Cheers
Bruce