Okay, first of all, the adapter is about run-of-the-mill when it came to speed. It uses the KTC FC1307A SD-to-IDE bridge/controller chip (designed back in 2007 or so according to the data sheet), which means that your maximum transfer rate is pegged at 25MBytes/sec. This might sound low to you (your average Sandisk Ultra 1/Ultra 3 cards can often do 50 to 80MBytes/sec), but remember that these adapters are typically used to replace 4200rpm mechanical hard drives, which will often max out at 17 to 25MBytes/sec linear sustained - you are using it to replace something that will die with something that is a little more...inexpensive and technically more resilient. Well, not really. You do want to power up the SD card once in awhile to make sure there are no bit rot. IT guy wisdom basically says that you should power up SD cards once every 6 months to ensure data integrity - more often if the ambient temperature in your house is higher. Also, if 25MBytes/sec transfer is too low for you, look for an mSATA to IDE44 adapter - they usually have a newer JMicron J20330 chip that can run at 80 to 100Mbytes/sec. That being said, you will need a spare mSATA drive and the adapter. which isn't exactly cheap.
However, the fact that the controller chip was designed in 2006 before the advent of large capacity/high speed SDXC does mean you will run into all sorts of compatibility issues. Drives will often not boot properly. Sometimes it's the SD card layout, while other times it's the BIOS acting up. Sometimes it'll work just fine but you'll be struggling to explain why. Buy extra cards and try multiple methods of getting it to work. Sometimes I have to use S2D to create bootable USB drives, or maybe setup a bootable CDROM drive.
My HP t5720 thin client will freeze up on the ESCD system update screen on 32/64GB Sandisk SDHC/XC drives (I subsequently used a USB CD drive to boot into Windows XP setup and successfully installed the OS into one of those 64GB SDXC cards just fine, and that booted up just okay. Maybe that ESCD lockup is just the SD card not being able to find a boot sector or something), while one of the adapters on my Pismo PowerBook seem to have no issues with the 64GB SD card inside.
Another issue seems to be system compatibility with more than one of these adapter cards installed...I installed one in the master IDE bay on my Pismo Powerbook, but popping one into the Expansion bay IDE adapter...doesn't seem to work. I am not even sure if it's the KeyLargo Southbridge in the Pismo not cooperating, the particular SD card not playing ball, or maybe I have a faulty controller.
Oh yeah, one more thing. If you plan to use it with an IDE female-to-female cable (like, for, say, replacing the IDE DOM on a Thin client), make sure you mark Pin 1 clearly. Plugging it in the wrong way will do some really bad stuff, like kill the controller. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | (78) | (37737) | (5973) | (48477) | (681) |
| Price | $15.99 | $10.30 | $8.39 | $20.69 | $6.94 |
| Sold By | Optimal Shop | NCG Ltd.🛒 | Photo4Less | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| Flash Memory Type | SD, MultiMediaCard, SDXC, SDHC | SDXC | SD | SDXC | SDHC |
| Item Dimensions | 4 x 2.5 x 0.1 inches | 1.26 x 0.94 x 0.09 inches | 5.2 x 3.3 x 0.5 inches | 0.09 x 0.94 x 1.26 inches | 5.5 x 0.1 x 3.25 inches |
| Item Weight | 1.60 ounces | 0.08 ounces | 0.16 ounces | 0.06 ounces | 0.32 ounces |
Customer Questions & Answers
Customer reviews
New life into old laptops (Apple and PC)
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2017
This product has met all of my expectations in two different places.The first one of these that I ordered went into an old Apple iBook Clamshell series M2453, the first generation that came in the blueberry color. Aside from the laptop being tedious to disassemble this little guy plugged right in with no problems. The iBook booted up with a system CD, the disk utility found it, initialized it, and began installing the OS. Since then I have put numerous applications on the laptop with no problems at all. There is a small (but noticeable) increase in speed, but nothing that will compare it to a modern SSD, and then computer now runs completely silent. The one interesting part to this is when it was installed, it was installed upside-down, which made the power and activity light visible through the semi transparent case of the computer. The red power light overpowers the green activity light, but I thought it worked out pretty well.The second one of these went into an old Toshiba Satellite 4005CDS. It was easy to get to that drive and only took a minute to take care of the whole installation. The increase in speed with this laptop is more noticeable that the iBook for whatever reason. Went into FDISK to create a partition and everything worked without a problem. Formatting the 16 GB SD card that I installed went MUCH faster than the 4 GB hard drive that was in there before.In both of the applications, battery life is increased by a lot - no .5 to 1 amp spinning drive sucking up all the juice!It is a minor thing, and has been mentioned before, but the only annoyance is the lack of mountability. There are no hole or anything to secure this thing in any way. It is light enough that it shouldn't flop around, but at the end of the day, the only thing that is keeping it in place are the pins for the PATA connection. It should be OK because the whole thing is very lightweight.Finally, even though the picture doesn't show it, both of the units that I ordered came without pin 20 installed, so you won't have to remove it yourself like older reviews mentioned.
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2017
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2018
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2017
This product has met all of my expectations in two different places.
The first one of these that I ordered went into an old Apple iBook Clamshell series M2453, the first generation that came in the blueberry color. Aside from the laptop being tedious to disassemble this little guy plugged right in with no problems. The iBook booted up with a system CD, the disk utility found it, initialized it, and began installing the OS. Since then I have put numerous applications on the laptop with no problems at all. There is a small (but noticeable) increase in speed, but nothing that will compare it to a modern SSD, and then computer now runs completely silent. The one interesting part to this is when it was installed, it was installed upside-down, which made the power and activity light visible through the semi transparent case of the computer. The red power light overpowers the green activity light, but I thought it worked out pretty well.
The second one of these went into an old Toshiba Satellite 4005CDS. It was easy to get to that drive and only took a minute to take care of the whole installation. The increase in speed with this laptop is more noticeable that the iBook for whatever reason. Went into FDISK to create a partition and everything worked without a problem. Formatting the 16 GB SD card that I installed went MUCH faster than the 4 GB hard drive that was in there before.
In both of the applications, battery life is increased by a lot - no .5 to 1 amp spinning drive sucking up all the juice!
It is a minor thing, and has been mentioned before, but the only annoyance is the lack of mountability. There are no hole or anything to secure this thing in any way. It is light enough that it shouldn't flop around, but at the end of the day, the only thing that is keeping it in place are the pins for the PATA connection. It should be OK because the whole thing is very lightweight.
Finally, even though the picture doesn't show it, both of the units that I ordered came without pin 20 installed, so you won't have to remove it yourself like older reviews mentioned.
The first one of these that I ordered went into an old Apple iBook Clamshell series M2453, the first generation that came in the blueberry color. Aside from the laptop being tedious to disassemble this little guy plugged right in with no problems. The iBook booted up with a system CD, the disk utility found it, initialized it, and began installing the OS. Since then I have put numerous applications on the laptop with no problems at all. There is a small (but noticeable) increase in speed, but nothing that will compare it to a modern SSD, and then computer now runs completely silent. The one interesting part to this is when it was installed, it was installed upside-down, which made the power and activity light visible through the semi transparent case of the computer. The red power light overpowers the green activity light, but I thought it worked out pretty well.
The second one of these went into an old Toshiba Satellite 4005CDS. It was easy to get to that drive and only took a minute to take care of the whole installation. The increase in speed with this laptop is more noticeable that the iBook for whatever reason. Went into FDISK to create a partition and everything worked without a problem. Formatting the 16 GB SD card that I installed went MUCH faster than the 4 GB hard drive that was in there before.
In both of the applications, battery life is increased by a lot - no .5 to 1 amp spinning drive sucking up all the juice!
It is a minor thing, and has been mentioned before, but the only annoyance is the lack of mountability. There are no hole or anything to secure this thing in any way. It is light enough that it shouldn't flop around, but at the end of the day, the only thing that is keeping it in place are the pins for the PATA connection. It should be OK because the whole thing is very lightweight.
Finally, even though the picture doesn't show it, both of the units that I ordered came without pin 20 installed, so you won't have to remove it yourself like older reviews mentioned.
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2019
