PC Building: Week 11 - SATA Cables and IDE Converter

This week, I did some research, and came up with a solution about how to access my files off my old IDE hard drive from my 2005 Dell Dimension 3000, which I recently disassembled as I don't use it any more.


I decided to buy a piece of kit called a SATA-IDE Bidirectional Converter, which, as the name suggests, converts SATA connections to IDE and vice versa. It has simple operation, just plug the connector into the hard drive and it's ready to use.

First I mounted the hard drive much like I did the others into a spare bay. I had ran out of screws from my case, so decided to attach this drive with the screws from the old case, as I wouldn't be needing them.

I then attached the converter to the drive, and linked it by SATA cable to the motherboard. I used one of the fan cables to power it, as it has the same connector.

Whilst I was buying the converter, I also decided to get a SATA cable for my optical drive, so it can finally be used. I attached that to a spare port on the motherboard.

Upon booting, I found that this drive was in fact the smallest drive that I have, at only 148GB, and I would in fact need 2 and a third of them just to hold my steam games (I have a lot)!

This has been a Behind the Team post from Thomas (The Stacinator). Bye for now!