Reliability of USB to SATA adapters

[TheForce]

Over the years I have had excellent luck with those IDE to USB cable adapters. They seem to work 24/7 until the power supplies go bad. The power supplies do go bad with high failure rate compared to the adapter cables. But that hasn't been a real problem.

Lately, I have been using some of the larger SATA drives 1 Tb and up with a newer adapter that has both IDE and SATA connections.
It makes connection OK and I can initialize and format the drive but when I attempt to transfer some large HD video files like 150 Gb and higher to the drive it runs for about 20 minutes and then loses connection with the system. I have to disconnect and reconnect. Sometimes I have to reboot the computer and start all over again.

As an inconvenient work around, I have connected an 18" SATA cable to the Mother board and run it to outside the case with a power supply extension. This so far has been working.

I understand the USB adapter will be slower than a direct SATA but I'm usually transferring from a USB 2.0 ext cased hard drive anyway so I doubt speed would be improved.

The real question is why does the computer stop recognizing the USB to SATA cable adapter?

 

[diogen]

I had similar experiences with SATA drives, regardless of size. Even drives in external enclosures.
What solved this for me is running SATA in native (as opposed to legacy) mode on the PC the drive is attached to.

Diogen.

 

[Smith P.]

The problem in Overheating of that chip inside; better use 'dumb' eSATA enclosures w/out any chips inside.

 

[diogen]

To make e-SATA hot swap you also need to run the SATA controller in native mode.

Diogen.

 

[BuddyBoy]

I hate to agree with Smith, P., but that has been my experience as well. I've only seen problems when the drive was hammered on for hours, and was in an enclosure that didn't provide adequate cooling. The drive itself was ok, but the USB-SATA bridge was unreliable at high temperatures.

 

[Smith P.]

I hate to agree with Smith, P...

Damn, and you're dare to share with me work/living area !

 

[TheForce]

In my case, the drive is an internal version but cabled with an USB to SATA adapter cable. I connected it to a different computer, Quad Core Vista 64 bit and it stays connected for days now.

This thread did get me looking into the native mode thing but I discovered the troubled computer gave me fits trying to access the BIOS. Nothing seems to work. F1,2,3,8,10, or12. Nothing. At best I can access the front page of it with F2 at bootup and it just says Americam Megatrends logo and no other keys except Esc work. Esc continues the boot process.

I researched all the help files and nothing! It's a Sony Vaio RA834G. Never had this trouble accessing Bios before on other computers.

Anyway the drive works OK on it using a SATA cable off the MB. Other drives less than 1Tb work fine with the USB to SATA adapter.

And if it wasn't clear- Heat isn't a problem everything seems to be running cool, actually.

 

[Smith P.]

What I'm usually checking is a temperature of the chip itself, so do opening box to expose PCB and the chip.

 

[diogen]

This thread did get me looking into the native mode thing but I discovered the troubled computer gave me fits trying to access the BIOS. Nothing seems to work. F1,2,3,8,10, or12. Nothing.

Keep in mind, just switching the SATA controller mode in BIOS - any which way you are going: to or from Native - will put the PC in an infinite reboot loop. There are manual workarounds but they don't work 100% of the time. Hence, this should be considered before (re)installing the OS.

Vaio's I've seen allowed entering BIOS by pressing F2 at logo time.

Diogen.