Buying an IDE to USB adapter

[MattMK45]

Hi all, it is a while since I have been on here!

My Powerbook G4 - which has an IDE Hard drive connection - has recently died, and I am wishing to get the files from the laptop hard drive and transfer them to my new iMac (21.5 inch, very nice!).

I have looked at some cables on sites on amazon, but none of them explicitly say whether they are compatible for Mac or not. Has anyone else been in this situation and have found a good cable that works?

I look forward to your responses.

Thanks,

Matt

 

[itickings]

I haven't bought any IDE-USB case in ages, so I can't give any recommendations about the current ones. USB storage devices should be standard however, and none of the ones I've tried have caused me any problems. YMMV.

In case you don't get any recommendations; If the converter doesn't need a special driver to function in Windows, I would expect it to work in OSX as well.

 

[stroked]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5in-3-5in...676&pid=100010&prg=1076&rk=4&sd=250560646014&

It isn't pretty, but will do what you want to do, for cheap.

 

[MattMK45]

Thanks for the link! I have seen similar items to this, and for £5 or so it will not hurt to buy it even if it doesn't work.

 

[tom vilsack]

Matt:

I have similar ide/usb enclosure (bought a cheapo one from NCIX) it will work np for what you need it for.

While your buying one of those you might think about buying a sata to usb 3 enclosure and using a ssd drive...i boot my 2006 Imac from external usb with ssd hd and it's way faster then internal hd...be interested if someone has run a speedtest with new Imacs internal harddrives (both sata and fusion) vs external usb3/ssd and thunderbolt/ssd...

 

[stroked]

Matt:

I have similar ide/usb enclosure (bought a cheapo one from NCIX) it will work np for what you need it for.

While your buying one of those you might think about buying a sata to usb 3 enclosure and using a ssd drive...i boot my 2006 Imac from external usb with ssd hd and it's way faster then internal hd...be interested if someone has run a speedtest with new Imacs internal harddrives (both sata and fusion) vs external usb3/ssd and thunderbolt/ssd...

I don't see how an external USB 2 , ssd could be faster than an internal sata HDD. Wouldn't the USB2 be a bottleneck?

 

[itickings]

I don't see how an external USB 2 , ssd could be faster than an internal sata HDD. Wouldn't the USB2 be a bottleneck?

A bottleneck, yes. Maximum transfer rate will be thresholded and USB has more CPU load than other connections.

That however is no guarantee that it won't be faster anyway in real life situations. SSD will provide nearly instant access to files, HDD will not. Small reads from all over the disk are horrible on HDD compared to SSD. Firewire would on the other hand be a much better choice than USB2 on a 2006 iMac...