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I have a 3.5 inch IDE/SATA (it has cables for both) enclosure, an old internal IDE Zip drive and 20 Zip disks. I just want to pull whatever's on them off and store the files somewhere else. I'm not looking for any kind of finished, permanent solution.

I'm pretty ignorant on the hardware side of things, but I thought it might work to just frankenstein these together and purge these old disks from my life. So, good idea? If not, what else can I do?

(I don't have any desktops lying around, otherwise I'd just throw it in one).

Robotnik
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Dzejms
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2 Answers2

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This ought to work just fine.

The IDE Zip-drive will appear to the OS as a removable hard-disk.
Any modern OS should be able to handle it out of the box.

I would recommend to connect it by IDE though.
Simply because that is the natural way to do it for this drive. The least conversion (to SATA) the better.

If your motherboard still has a IDE connecter connect it directly to that. That would be even better.

Don't forget the jumper the Zip drive as Master. IDE requires those jumpers to be set properly.

P.S.
Don't be surprised if it is damn slow. Zip drives are a fair bit slower than hard-drives.

Tonny
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Based on the connectors involved nothing will be damaged if you plug the zip drive into the ide connector. Give it a go and find out, the worst that I can see happening is that it just won't work.

BeowulfNode42
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