TechBlog from Sewell

Our USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Combo Adapter has a really cool feature. It can connect two different hard drives to your computer simultaneously. One hard drive will need to be Serial ATA while the other drive can be either 2.5 inch, or 3.5 inch IDE. It also provides power to each of the drives connected. The pictures below show how the power cables are connected.

The power brick plugs into the back of the USB to IDE/SATA adapter through a round DC power plug. Then a mini-molex power cable plugs into the adapter and provides power to SATA drives as well as 3.5 inch IDE drives. If you are powering a 2.5 inch drive, then you won’t need the molex cable. Isnt that amazing?

We now have an IDE to Serial ATA converter. The naming convention can be confusing, but now we have both solutions. Connecting a Serial ATA drive to an IDE motherboard, or connecting an IDE drive to a SATA motherboard. (which we have had for some time)

Our SATA to IDE has been a popular product, for those who are connecting and IDE Drive to their new SATA motherboard, however its harder to find an adapter for a SATA drive to an IDE interface.

There is a lot of demand for these adapters, from Hard drive Cloning, data recovery, or if you just found a great deal on a large capacity drive, but don’t want to upgrade your motherboard.

http://sewelldirect.com/IDE-to-SerialATA-Converter.asp

Our SATA to IDE adapter converts your IDE drive interface into a SATA drive interface. The only problem with this conversion is that it slows down your SATA drive to IDE speeds (If speed is an issue, you may want to just install a Serial ATA controller card). If you have a laptop, then use a PCMCIA SATA card. We have had many customers ask us if it will convert SATA drives into IDE. It will not do that conversion.

If you ever find that your hardware is acting funny, then try updating the driver. If your device uses a native driver, then you will most likely be unsuccessful in finding an update. The best two sources for drivers are the company you bought the driver from, and the manufacturer of the device. You can visit our driver site for updated drivers. If you didnt buy the device from our site, then there is a good chance that our driver will not work with your device.

This suggestion has proven to be particularly successful with GPS units and USB to Serial adapters.

Many incompatibilities between device and controllers, are caused by incompatibilities with chipsets. For example, Our SW-1301 uses a prolific chipset. We have seen cases where a GPS unit is compatible with one of our prolific chipsets and not another. If you find that you are having compatibility problems, then try another chipset. Our SW-1301, SW-1310, SW-1901. SW-1902 use the prolific chipset. SW-1314, SW-1315, SW-1316, SW-1317, SW-1318 all use an FTDI chipset. SW-1322 has a BAFO chipset. SW-1319, SW-1320, DSU-100, QSU-100 all use the Quatech chipset. You can view our USB to serial adapters at our support site. Chipsets do not only affect Serial adapters. They can affect most controllers (i.e. USB, Firewire, etc..).