# Support for IDE/ATA/PATA drives



## elliptic (Mar 26, 2013)

Hi all,

I've a number of old project FreeBSD systems laying around, some going back 10 years or more. Many of these were short term configurations and when project was done I'd just label the disk drive and put it in storage. I'm starting to realize I need a reliable way to boot or access these occasionally and looking for a way to do so without having a motherboard with IDE support. Anyone care to recommend a (reliable) PCI-based solution allowing FreeBSD to boot on newer motherboards?

TIA


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## wblock@ (Mar 26, 2013)

Convert them to VMs and save them along with other backups.  IDE is becoming rare, and old drives can fail in several unrecoverable ways.  As far as a PCI IDE card, my old Promise card still works.  But USB to IDE adapters are readily available also.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Mar 26, 2013)

Via VT6421A Sata and IDE PCI card; added an IDE port and it was inexpensive. I've not tried it to boot though.


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## mav@ (Mar 27, 2013)

As an option, there are many PATA<->SATA converters on the market. I have several and they all are working well. You may use them with any SATA or SAS controllers. PCI slots may also disappear soon same as PATA, so if you really want PATA controllers, you may prefer PCIe ones, such as JMB36x. Some first Marvell 6Gb SATA chips had PATA ports, but they are quite broken and blocked by the driver.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Mar 27, 2013)

YMMV... a few hours after  backup, an ide > sata converter which arrived from an RMA warehouse caused smoke to emit from, and ruined, my primary FreeBSD disk... 
....
BTW after ordering the device I mentioned above, I noticed that one could have also used pci-1x cards on the motherboard.


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