Is there a UNIVERSAL HDD docking station (IDE to IDE as well as IDE to SATA)?

Brian_Pamo

Hi all
I have 2 VERY old PC’s that are performing important functions for me. Before the PATA/IDE HHD’s die I won’t to clone them. I would prefer to buy one of those docking stations where you literally just stick the source and destination drives in the top. Sounds ok up to now I guess but out of all the docking caddy’s on the market I can’t find a station that will also do the old IDE/PATA to IDE/PATA. There’s loads on EBay/Amazon etc that do IDE/PATA to SATA and that will be helpful one day, but for now I want to copy IDE/PATA to IDE/PATA. I have literally looked at loads and even though they are called universal you can clearly see that they all accept only 1 old IDE/PATA drive. (If you look from above you can clearly see only one IDE connector and 4PIN Molex) with the other side being SATA. 

Any help or advice please?

Neil_Jones

They're universal because the modern standard is SATA, not IDE.  IDE Drives haven't been made brand new for years.  Any you do find will be used or "refurbished" or pulls.

You might do better to clone them to a SATA drive and then you can use the same docking station to clone them back if needs be, one SATA drive per PC.  Something small (maybe a small SSD), since I dare say the hard drive size of the machines in question won't be any bigger than 4Gb at the most?

[Deleted User]

Have the PC's themselves got more than one IDE/PATA connection? 

If so, a software solution might be the best bet, install your second IDE/PATA drive in the PC and use Acronis / Easus tools to do the job?

Side question - how the hell have you got hold of new IDE/PATA drives to clone to?

poppellerant

Due to the layout of the pins, you won't get a docking station that lets you fit SATA and IDE drives in the same slot.  You might be able to find a USB adapter on eBay that can plug into SATA or IDE drives, however.

Do the machines have CD/DVD writers or USB ports? These are far simpler methods of copying the files to another machine.  Perhaps you have a 386/486 machine without either - in which case bite the bullet and just buy a USB to IDE adapter knowing that it will only be used for IDE drives.

forgotmyname

Spend £10 on an old PC. As many IDE / SATA ports as you need and choices which to backup onto.

Brian_Pamo

The PC’s in question are old but believe it or not one of them runs a CNC machine  (via a parallel port) worth over £10,000. The CNC machine manufacturer has already told me “When the PC’s die we will need to move you to our latest PC and software” and I can tell you that this is circa £8,000 + VAT. In true money saving style it is just not necessary. I literally have 20 Old PC’s in the loft. All are similar age to this PC. All have similar IDE/PATA HDD’s so there is just no need to scrap anything when with my knowledge and the help of you guys here I can achieve the desired. 

Thanks for your comments and assistance all. 

getmore4less

Thought this was familiar. 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6143145/want-to-clone-very-old-very-important-hdd-but-scared/p1

Brian_Pamo

getmore4less said:

Thought this was familiar. 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6143145/want-to-clone-very-old-very-important-hdd-but-scared/p1

Funnily enough it is the same company. Same family lol. As you can see we try to save as much money as possible. The company in question has a lot of old PC’s running a few different machines. The thing they all have in common is that the companies who own/supplied the machines won’t even consider trying to repair old PC’s. It’s simple... We need to sell you XYZ

forgotmyname

I have PCs with parallel ports and serial ports. You can still buy addon cards also.

fwor

Brian_Pamo said:

I literally have 20 Old PC’s in the loft. All are similar age to this PC. All have similar IDE/PATA HDD’s so there is just no need to scrap anything. 

If you have 20 similar PCs in the loft, just dedicate one of them as a cloning platform - hang a long IDE ribbon cable out the back, plug both source and destination HDDs into it, and boot the PC from one of the many live cloning CDs. For example Clonezilla will boot as a live CD (though the user interface takes a little bit of getting used to).

getmore4less

Collecting tons of old kit is one strategy. 

Can't remember if I suggested offering that as a service to others with old machines to leverage the effort. 
You won't be alone with this problem. 

Might be worth looking at getting the software running on something a little newer, as said the hardware interfaces are available.