Home Made 2.5" to 3.5" IDE Converter

by zack247

49K2416

Intro: Home Made 2.5" to 3.5" IDE Converter

So I needed a hard drive for a project and all I had was a 60GB 2.5" IDE one, unfortunately this project used a standard IDE cable and I don't have/don't want a 2.5>3.5 inch converter.

So I wasted an afternoon soldering 44 tiny wires onto a connector.
I went to this link to find out how the 44 pin 2.5" ide hard drive was numbered.

As I understood it, the top row was every odd number and the bottom row was every even number.
I split up a standard IDE cable and stripped 3/4 of a cm of coating off the ends. Then I looped it in half to form a flat oval shape.
I tinned the wire next, put it in the contact area, and heated it up to melt the solder.
The plug that I soldered to was one from a laptop, the adapter plug was designed so that it would be easy to swap a bad HDD for a good one. I suppose it was made so it would be (somewhat) easy to solder to as well.

Here are some pictures of the results, I currently have Windows XP installed on it and it works great.

15 Comments

magnam 6 years ago

good work, gonna try it.

jhavel1 9 years ago

Nice work. BTW you can buy a 3.5 to 2.5 IDE adapter for around $1 (one) dollar on ebay. LOL.

svishnupurikar 9 years ago

hi , I want to attach laptops HDD to computer.... looking at your DIY cable ,I have question.

what about the power supply to HDD; if i sholder I solder pin1 to pin40 ;what to solder for power supply pin41?pin42?pin43?pin44?

zack247 9 years ago

hi there! If you compare the pinouts of the 2.5" drive (http://pinoutsguide.com/HD/Ata44Internal_pinout.shtml) and the standard 3.5" drive (you can find it on the same website as the other link) it will all make sense for you. If I recall correctly, its mostly pin-to-pin, but the 2.5" drive also has power on the same connector, which is why it has the extra pins. Just compare the two pinouts and all of your questions should be answered. :)

svishnupurikar 9 years ago

hi , I want to attach laptops HDD to computer.... looking at your DIY cable ,I have question.

what about the power supply to HDD; if i sholder I solder pin1 to pin40 ;what to solder for power supply pin41?pin42?pin43?pin44?

Andruha1123 12 years ago

Thanks for the instructable! I will probably make, just because it takes so long for these to come from hong kong, though they are just 1 buck and free shipping!

knexsuperbuilderfreak 12 years ago

also is that a convertor that will work? http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=906&sku=17705

zack247 12 years ago

yes that converter will work, its even probably built better than mine :P

Nostalgic Guy 13 years ago

Nice job :-)
I remember making one of these back in the early 90s for my Commodor Amiga A1200.
i made the mistake of showing a couple of friends & the next thing I knew i had made almost two dozen of them..... lol

zack247 13 years ago

in that case im lucky i only have one converter piece! :P

Nostalgic Guy 13 years ago

So did I to begin with however I did have a friend in IT support who "liberated" the required parts from his lab, all I did from there on was supply the soldering iron & the patience :-)
Still it did save a lot of friends a lot of time playing games like Beneath a Steel Sky which if I remember correctly came on thirty 1.44mb floppy disks & sometimes required forur disk changes just to go down a flight of stairs to another room lol

zack247 13 years ago

haha well i suppose that helps a lot!
its surprising that they chose to encode the game that way though.

mr.incredible 13 years ago

The Amiga was back in the 80's. That was high tech back then.