Universal External hard Drive Reader (for 80s/90s/2000s)

[Police State]

I have a bunch of old drives removed from various PC and Laptop home computers over the years, some more than 20 years old. Some of the drives are early ATA/IDE, others may even be SCSI, 3.5 and 2.5", etc.

Is there such a 'swiss army' type device that you use?

I would like to take a look at the data on them before finally disposal. Does anyone know of a (ideally) single device with various connectors that would cover all bases, such that I can pull the data in via external USB?
If so, any usefull links would be appreciated.

[eeLee]

I have an external drive caddy that does SATA and eSATA but you're looking at PATA and SCSI.....I'd get an old knacker PC with both, get it on a network and pull the data somewhere. I doubt you'll get something that does PATA and SCSI together, there is no demand for this.

[K50 DEL]

I use this for exactly what you need regarding IDE & SATA
I seem to remember that SCSI is pretty much impossible to interface through USB and the general consensus is to setup an old PC with a SCSI card and do it that way.

https://tinyurl.com/idesatapata

[markiii]

USB to IDE then one of these?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LEEINTO-Female-80Pin-LVD-...

[Mr Pointy]

There's plenty of SATA/IDE interfaces on Amazon that will do almost anything except SCSI:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=IDE+SATA+ADAPTERHARD+...

Maybe pick one with an exteranal PSU if you have big 3.5" drives as sometimes the power they need is more than the USB port can support.

[Police State]

K50 DEL said:

I use this for exactly what you need regarding IDE & SATA
I seem to remember that SCSI is pretty much impossible to interface through USB and the general consensus is to setup an old PC with a SCSI card and do it that way.

https://tinyurl.com/idesatapata

Thanks for that link, that should take care of the ATA/IDE stuff. Can I ask, did that link also come with a power supply for the drive as in the image below?

[K50 DEL]

Police State said:

K50 DEL said:

I use this for exactly what you need regarding IDE & SATA
I seem to remember that SCSI is pretty much impossible to interface through USB and the general consensus is to setup an old PC with a SCSI card and do it that way.

https://tinyurl.com/idesatapata

Thanks for that link, that should take care of the ATA/IDE stuff. Can I ask, did that link also come with a power supply for the drive as in the image below?

That's correct, it came with the kit as pictured

[Police State]

K50 DEL said:

Police State said:

K50 DEL said:

I use this for exactly what you need regarding IDE & SATA
I seem to remember that SCSI is pretty much impossible to interface through USB and the general consensus is to setup an old PC with a SCSI card and do it that way.

https://tinyurl.com/idesatapata

Thanks for that link, that should take care of the ATA/IDE stuff. Can I ask, did that link also come with a power supply for the drive as in the image below?

That's correct, it came with the kit as pictured

Great!

Kel, Thanks for coming back to me on this. appreciated.
(will order one now)

Edited by Police State on Friday 20th September 14:10

[Police State]

Now that I have ordered the recommended kit, my mind has turned to accessing any data...

Some of these drives would have been Win 95 era and onwards, no bitlocker but perhaps compressed drives back when that mattered. Can anyone recommend a reliable piece of software to just get at the data with a minimum of hoops?

[K50 DEL]

Police State said:

Now that I have ordered the recommended kit, my mind has turned to accessing any data...

Some of these drives would have been Win 95 era and onwards, no bitlocker but perhaps compressed drives back when that mattered. Can anyone recommend a reliable piece of software to just get at the data with a minimum of hoops?

Unless the drive is actually encrypted in some way you shouldn't need anything else.
Plugging it in through the adaptor will just open however many "virtual" drives the physical hard drive has on it (most will have at least 2, on the original PC they would have been drives C and D but they'll appear on your modern system as the next available drive letters, so could be H and J for example.

You can then browse through the contents in the normal way and drag and drop anything you want to keep

If there's compressed files on the old drives then modern Windows will very likely deal with them seamlessly, if not then 7Zip is my go-to freebee software for this task.

[dundarach]

Just been using mine, yes work great!