USB Thumb drive to IDE adapters?

Borillar

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Jun 4, 2012
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I am a retired engineer with lots of time and some old computer parts sitting in my garage. I am wondering if there is an adapter out there that would allow me to plug in a USB thumb drive to a computer's IDE or SATA port. I know the reverse is available => IDE drives to USB. Anybody know of an adapter out there?
 
You trying to run a virtual O/S I presume to make use of some old hardware?
Yes. I have an abundance of usb thumb drives and some old pc hardware. Unfortunately, my old IDE drives are bad. I wanted to build some old systems to play old games. By old, I mean windows 98/me/xp era. Unfortunately, those old OS types don’t support usb booting, so I can’t just install windows 98 on a thumb drive and plug it in and expect it to work.
 
Check gog.com and see if they have the old games you want to play. They modify them to run on Win10/11.
Thanks. I may do so. I'm more into this as a way to bring back some old hardware to life. Over the years, I've built hundreds of systems for family, friends, and as a side business. Now it's just a hobby to keep myself busy and my mind engaged.
 
I found an adapter that allows you to go from an SD memory card to IDE. I may give that a try. I have bunch of old SD cards from old digital cameras. 25 years ago a 1 or 2GB hard drive was considered large.
 
Yes. I have an abundance of usb thumb drives and some old pc hardware. Unfortunately, my old IDE drives are bad. I wanted to build some old systems to play old games. By old, I mean windows 98/me/xp era. Unfortunately, those old OS types don’t support usb booting, so I can’t just install windows 98 on a thumb drive and plug it in and expect it to work.
I have a Win XP machine that runs well. Been sitting for about 4 years now.
I have seen folks other places wanting to buy XP machines to play old games.
I also have some old games, the entire Red Alert series, Halo CE and a couple others.
But I never have because online for many old games you can find patches/updated launch executable etc. and play old games on Win 7 machines.
I have heard they won't work on Win 10 and up though
 

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