USB to IDE Interfaces

[Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu>]

I want to be able to connect various IDE drives to a Linux
system via USB port for backups, restores, and diagnostics such
as: Is this drive good for anything other than a paper weight?

	I'd hate to buy an interface and find out I need some
special driver that only exists under Windows.

	I have used dedicated USB devices that had IDE drives in
them and they worked fine all be it slo-o-owly on a USB2 port,
but this would be  different because each IDE drive is going to
be formatted differently and be anywhere from gigabytes to 40
megabytes in capacity.

	If I understand things right, the IDE drive itself
registers its parameters so this may not be an issue and the
device should respond to mount, dd, and fdisk like any other
device.

	I am hoping to upgrade the IDE drives on some older
Linux systems from 10 GB to larger and use the USB to IDE
converter to assist in transfering files and using the still
functional smaller drives as archival storage.

	Any ideas and recommendations as to which interfaces are
good or which should be avoided are appreciated.

	Thank you.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group