IDE Cards ?

[JerometheGiraff]

This computer motherboard doesn't have any IDE ports and I have one IDE HDD. Anyone with experience with IDE cards what they make of this, before I buy it ?

 

[pparks1]

I'd really try to get off the IDE drive if I could and get the data on a new drive. It will be faster, it will be quieter, and you will have less cable clutter by not having those IDE ribbon cables in the box.

I don't have experience with that particular card, but have used others (albeit 10+ years ago) and they worked out ok.

 

[TVeblen]

As long as these cards have a working driver for W7 they are fine.

The thing I noticed with the card you've chosen is that, according to the reviews, it does not come with a driver CD and some people had problems getting it to install in W7 and Vista. The manufacturer may be relying on built-in Windows drivers to run the card.

It is easy enough to go to the manufacturer's website and check to see if there is a download for a driver for your flavor of W7 (32 bit, 64 bit). I would personally only get a card that had it's own driver and enough customer support to a least have a downloads section on their website.

The grain of salt here is that very often these parts are purchased by people who have no clue about installing computer hardware and don't even know about drivers, so many bad reviews can be just the clueless botching the installation of a perfectly good card. That is why it is important to check.

 

[Zepher]

I just purchased a sata3 card made by Syba and it worked fine, windows installed the driver automatically, and it did come with a cd if I needed one.

This is the same manufacturer,
Amazon.com: Syba Combo SATA II/IDE RAID PCI-Express x1 Controller Card (SY-PEX50039): Electronics

The one you linked above happens to have an e-Sata port as well.

 

[JerometheGiraff]

Thanks for the input. I'll probably get the card

 

[Mark Phelps]

Sorry, don't have experience with that card, but have tried several different SATA-to-IDE cards and adapters and my experience with all of them was the same -- the drives could be used in Win7, but they would not boot. Perhaps a newer card will work better than did my PCI cards.