IDE to SATA Adapter for laptops

[ThinkPad560X]

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 same era as the ThinkPad T43 with a Intel Centrino CPU and XP OS. I was wanting to get a new HDD or SSD for the laptop as it don't have one anymore. It is in mint condition with a nice 17" display. I was wondering if there is a SATA adapter for the HDD connector. This connector is like the one in the ThinkPad 390. It still has the connector, but it is PATA.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/280825956795?c ... gKC0vD_BwE
I found this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/223118476716?c ... gLX4fD_BwE

[kfzhu1229]

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 same era as the ThinkPad T43 with a Intel Centrino CPU and XP OS. I was wanting to get a new HDD or SSD for the laptop as it don't have one anymore. It is in mint condition with a nice 17" display. I was wondering if there is a SATA adapter for the HDD connector. This connector is like the one in the ThinkPad 390. It still has the connector, but it is PATA.

Actually, the connector is quite differenit than on the 390. ThinkPad 390 has basically the reverse of this connector, this is found on other models like Inspiron 7x00 and most of the IDE era HP Compaqs.
This has that Dell style interposer connector that is shared across basically all the mainstream Dell Inspiron/Latitude/Precision models of IDE era.
If you find yourself in a situation where you have a bunch of these laptops with hard drive caddies but no hard drive and none of those connectors, here's a bulk listing for you that you will find helpful: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/270885673226?_t ... %3A2563228
As for Inspiron 9300, unlike the Thinkpad T43 it uses native IDE for both the optical drive and the internal hard drive, as opposed to the SATA-IDE bridge on the T43. So your only bet of SATA drives is to either get a IDE to mSATA adapter or go and get a slimline IDE to 2.5" SATA optical drive adapter (but they are getting increasingly hard to find and increasingly more expensive)

[ThinkPad560X]

Anyone know if they make a SATA version of this? It would be a 3rd party as SATA wasn't out when these IDE drives were around. It be nice to buy a new 500GB SSD and just slide this onto the connector. https://www.ebay.com/itm/224328269970?h ... BMsKqu8Ihi

I got my DELL Latitude D600 out and surprising the battery still holds 100% charge. May check for a bios update when I get a new drive in it as laptops don't like to do bios updates without a battery or 50% charged battery. Right now I got my CF to IDE adapter out but the CF card is only 8GB and looking for that connector. But I have lots of them so have to look around for the old HDD.

[kfzhu1229]

I got my DELL Latitude D600 out and surprising the battery still holds 100% charge. May check for a bios update when I get a new drive in it as laptops don't like to do bios updates without a battery or 50% charged battery. Right now I got my CF to IDE adapter out but the CF card is only 8GB and looking for that connector. But I have lots of them so have to look around for the old HDD.

As for the connector itself to connect regular 2.5 IDE HDD's, I believe there is at least one seller on ebay that sells them in packs of 5 or something. I bought from them once and came in real handy as I had 3 of these dell laptops shipped to me with the caddy but no drive and no connector.
Unfortunately you can't just attach a SATA drive to this thing, the signal is gonna need conversion for sure.
Also unlike the ThinkPad T43, as far as I know of the Dell laptops have native IDE connection to the internal HDD as opposed to having SATA and then lazy last ditched effort to convert it back to IDE due to the unavailability of SATA drives on time.
Unless you count replacing the machine with an Inspiron 9400, I dont think there are any more straight forward way for it to take SATA drives without conversion to IDE interface.

[ThinkPad560X]

I do have lots of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/255500592901?h ... BMwoLQkYti

They work good in my old desktops that if want to keep the old boards in them but have a new drive. I even use one in my IBM NetVista X40 /X41 All in ones. But for laptops they do make these as well for 2.5, but the drive will stick out and you cannot put on the HDD cover. So I am just using the CF adapter with a 64GB CF card.

[ThinkPad560X]

Has anyone bought any of these and do they work? I am wanting to get some for my machines such as IBM T43, R40, T23 and Dell D600. If so I will buy a couple of these and I can get Msata drives any electronic store. https://www.ebay.com/itm/123457133753?_ ... %3A2047675

I been looking at buying 2.5 IDE drives and 98% of them will probably be dead, wore out or about to die. And don't want to waste money on disk drives anymore. The last HDD I bought was a NEW Old Stock SATA 2TB WD Enterprise Class drive and you can just feel the slowness on bootup compared to an SSD. Right now I am using the ThinkPad X40,X41 60GB HDD in my DELL D600 and installing Windows 7 as I been wanting to get this machine up and running. The CF to IDE with 64GB SanDisk Extreme isn't booting after I install XP. I get through formatting and restarting and then drive error. Windows 7 install doesn't detect the CF adapter at all, but the DELL bios does detect it. Windows 10 32bit does attempt to install but need 4GB RAM. So I am just hoping these IDE to MSATA drive adapters work.

[ThinkPad560X]

Here is that one post about the floppy to SD. https://technabob.com/blog/2016/03/01/9 ... r-casemod/