When working with retro-hardware an IDE to USB adapter is very useful. There exist adapters on the market, with varying quality that are very cheap but some of them have design flaws that cannot be overcome. In reality, most of the issues that might come up with these adapters, especially when using the IDE port, is that the power provided to the hard-drive from the USB port is insufficient to spin up the drive. This occurs mostly with spinning drives and even 2.5" spinning-disk drives might have the same issue. The reason is that even 2.5" drives require about or whilst the power rating on USB 2.0 ports is limited by the specification at . One fix that we have seen in the wild were cables that have two ports, one of them for data and the other for additional power. However, we'd like to make a fix that is local to the adapter and not the cable such that this section documents some changes to one of these IDE to USB adapters.

If you check the adapter on the left in the image, it consists of an USB 2.0 jack leading to the adapter itself, with IDE 3.5" ports on the left and an IDE 2.5" port on the right.

This cable simply has no chance of working with spinning 2.5" drives! There are very many cables like this and without addressing the power issues, these cables will not work and will appear dead on arrival.

So, what happened with Brian? Well, the adapter got very hot because the HDD circuitry was pulling more amperes that the USB port could provide. The disk as never recognized more than likely because the circuitry was trying to spin up the drive but every time the drive spun up, the power requirements shot over so the drive crashed, and then the IDE converter tried again and again to spin up the drive.

This is the typical behavior for these adapters when the attached drive cannot be powered by the USB port. However, this cable will just never work because drives that specify or power consumption will not be able to be powered by such that the controller incessantly tries to spin up the drive and does not report anything to Windows.

It is not a "cheap Chinese device", it is simply broken by design. Intuitively, the IDE standard is long gone by now so nobody really expects people to buy them. Furthermore, the problem pertains only to 2.5" drives because the other 3.5" IDE port only provides data, whilst the 2.5" port provides both data and power to the hard-drive. Typically, these cables are also sold with a power supply, like in the first image, such that 3.5" spinning or non-spinning drives will work, so will SATA drives and more than likely 2.5" SSD with an IDE port might also fall within the that the USB port can provide. However, spinning 2.5" drives will never work with this device, regardless whether the product is from China or not!

First, the IDE interface part is cracked open, and, needless to say that nobody expects this device to be repaired so you can expect a hard time opening it. The usual technique of sliding a knife on the very edge will work and the device will rip open "luckily" in two separate pieces with some minimal damage.

Either way, the PCB can be retrieved from the plastic case. Looking at the input circuit from the USB port, there are two traces leading to a small power regulator - namely, the small black part that the two cables are connected to. This IC power regulator is a buck step-down that converts the provided by the USB port to about which is necessary to power the 2.5" IDE port. The IC itself works fine, and it does the job, the problem being in terms of amperes not volts.

The solution is to attach two wires, one to the of the USB port and the other to the ground pin of the power regulator. Even if the soldering is perfect, this cable will be connected to an USB port, so some yanking can be expected such that some hot melt glue is applied on top to make sure that the wires cannot be ripped out.

To pull the cable on the outside, a small crevice is cut out in the plastic on the same side as the USB port.

The case is then re-assembled and some non-permanent glue is used to glue the case back together.

There is some reasoning to fixing this adapter this way rather than removing the lead altogether and supplying power separately to the adapter; or even worse, applying an external voltage to the device. The idea is to keep the same voltage level and since the device is to be accessed by a computer, the second USB port will be powered by the same computer thereby providing the same voltage levels. Adding external voltage or an external source will provide an additional source of power that in terms of voltage would end up competing and/or introducing a short depending on the voltage differential.

The adapter was first connected to a drive, then the main USB cable and then the secondary USB cable were connected to the computer. Testing with a 2.5" spinning drive that previously did not work, the drive spun out fine, was recognized by Windows and the whole disk was read successfully to an image.

2.5" spinning drives can never work with adapters that have a single USB port however the fix is very easy to DIY. Alternatively, a splitter cable such as the following would also work.

Flash memory disks do not need that much power, so a compact flash (CF) adapter can be powered off the 2.5" IDE port but anything that is mechanical in technology will always typically require lots of current due to mechanical work being many orders of magnitude larger more energy consuming than simple digital electronics.