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Topic: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface? (Read 1920 times) previous topic - next topic
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Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Hi,
I have a Plextor PX760A drive that I use to rip my CDs.
I would like to put together a enclosure for it, because I use a laptop and connect it only via a USB-IDE Unitek bridge. Are there any cases available for 5.25 mm drives with an IDE interface such as Plextor? I've seen them, but only on sata. Thank in advance for response.
Greetings

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #1 –
There were enclosures like that. I vaguely remember that Plextor drives use some proprietary commands that didn't pass regular USB-PATA enclosures, but they made their own ones which supposedly worked. I do have one original enclosure with still working 52x CD writer but I can't verify the story.
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Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #2 –
I've never seen an external drive with an "exposed'" IDE connector.   I know they used to make cases for IDE with USB ports but maybe that's obsolete now...

You might have to modify one by taking out the electronics and maybe your USB bridge will fit inside?

Or maybe you can build something from a general purpose Project box.

Or maybe you can find a smallish computer case with a slot for an optical drive.

...I think most drives are good now (and they are very inexpensive unless you want a Blu-Ray burner) so you probably don't NEED a Plextor.   If your ripping software supports AccurateRip you can be assured of getting good rips.   And if you occasionally get a bad one, you can hook-up the Plextor without a case and try it.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #3 –
You need an "external enclosure"
EZ CD Audio Converter / FLAC or WavPack

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #4 –
Thanks for the answers.
I must admit that Plextor can be useful to me, because once it ripped a CD protected by Cactus Data Shield without any problems, my other drives (mostly slim ones) detected 99 tracks and did not want to rip correctly.
@DVDdoug you're right, most new drives are suitable for ripping regular CDs. I have EBAU108 6L myself and it works very well. However, the drive built into my laptop cannot detect gabs correctly.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #6 –
Or cross fingers on a 20ish-year-old product https://www.ebay.com/itm/285478714993 that's supposedly new.
korth

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #7 –
Back in 2017 I bought a KOTB-500C2 external enclosure made by N4CE, to house my IDE PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D, another "read almost anything" drive, that I didn't want to lose the use of. I can't comment on it's suitability for your Plextor drive, but it works fine with my Pioneer drive in conjunction with CueTools (CueRipper). Nicely made, aluminium and plastic construction, it supports both USB 2.0 and Firewire connections and includes a cooling fan, internal switch mode psu (so no need for yet another power brick on the desk), and all cables. The drive was easy to fit into the enclosure. There is currently at least one UK supplier, although I got mine from a different supplier back in 2017.  Google "N4CE KOTB-500C2"
No connection, just a happy customer.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #8 –
@plugs13amp Thanks!
I found it in one store, I have to check if they ship to my country (Poland).
The price also seems to be quite reasonable for the case.
https://www.epsilonpc.co.uk/products/n4ce-kotb-500c2-combo-firewire-usb-2-0-5-25-ide-external-drive-case
EDIT: It looks like they don't ship to my country. In the Country field I can only choose United Kingdom.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #9 –
@DJ
I see they have both an email address and a chat line, might be worth enquiring to see if they'll ship to Poland

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #10 –
I'm honestly wondering when we'll get something like the Kryoflux or Greaseweazle for optical devices.
Would be nice to have a raw format for archiving, etc.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #11 –
I'm pretty sure the Domesday Duplicator can already do that. Of course, optical drives usually don't expose the raw signal from the disc the way floppy drives do, so it's not as convenient to set up.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #12 –
Well, IDE/ATAPI drives use SCSI commands and replies, so there is no analog data being transmitted. But to my knowledge, there exist SCSI and ATA imaging devices, mostly used for data preservation and forensics.
I'm not sure how much abstraction regular (windows, etc.) drivers provide. Sending raw SCSI / ATA commands and collecting the information directly might be an approach for better data collection.

I'm mainly speaking from a position of convenience, it might be easier to simply attach a device to the optical drive, image everything using raw SCSI / ATA commands, create an image internally and either save that to an SD card or some sort of internal memory which can be then accessed through USB for instance. I hope my explanation make sense...
The resulting image can then be archived and interpreted at will, without the need to re-read the original optical data (or hard disk data, for that matter).
I know that the forensic hardware I'm talking about is able to check for read errors, so they do have at least some way to access lower-level data of the storage device in question, other than just streaming binary data from the medium. The forensic software for some of them is able to provide graphs displaying that data, etc.
These forensic devices are really slow, reading a 200GB mechanical PATA drive takes hours.

However, let's be clear here, a 700MB (or 74min red book CD) is kinda small in this day and age. Even if imaging a medium like that takes two hours, people won't really care as this only has to be done once.

When it comes to anything later, like DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, I'm not sure, I've never used Blu-Rays, and I'm not sure how the controller talks to DVD drives (I mean, all I know, is it uses SATA, but I don't know the way data is requested and interpreted).

Quote from: Porcus on
Tempting: https://www.ebay.com/itm/166376533256 , cross fingers and hope for the best - and be prepared to throw it away and thrift and old computer to use when you need it.
I used a bunch of these over the years, and when it comes to optical drives, they're hella flaky. The only drive that worked reliably with one of these, was a laptop CD-RW/DVD combo drive that normally goes into an older Fujitsu (?) laptop. The drive attaches over SATA internally, and that's what the little adapter was able to interface with. When it comes to IDE/ATAPI optical drives, I had no luck whatsoever. I tried with like 20 drives from different manufacturers over the past 15 or so years, none of them worked correctly. Problems were on one hand the adapter itself, but also the drivers, being kinda confused about what is connected there over USB. They do work surprisingly good with regular hard drives, though. Even the cheapest ones I had and still have, worked perfectly fine interfacing with 2.5" PATA hard drives, etc.

As a side note, the best luck I had with "external" optical drives, was a drive meant for installation into 1U servers (so technically it was an internal drive!). It was a "slim" device, similar to laptop drives, the weird thing though, was that internally didn't attach over SATA, but USB. It didn't use a regular USB cable, but one of those things that go into internal USB connector headers (see attached pic). In case you're wondering about the "weird looking USB connector", that thing is called "USB key A" and it can be directly converted to USB-C with a purely passive adapter. So, in other words, that was a USB-C drive. It required external power, but it was by far the best optical drive I've used. It read literally anything (anything up to DVDs) without any fuss at all. Too bad it didn't survive me moving house five years ago...

I know Op is looking for an enclosure for his IDE/ATAPI drive, but perhaps looking for a decent USB-drive like that is also a viable option - be it USB-C or one of the earlier connectors?

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: polemon on
Well, IDE/ATAPI drives use SCSI commands and replies, so there is no analog data being transmitted. But to my knowledge, there exist SCSI and ATA imaging devices, mostly used for data preservation and forensics.
Standard SCSI commands don't provide the low-level access that's necessary for preserving CDs. (If they did, there wouldn't be any arguments about offset correction...)

Quote from: polemon on
When it comes to anything later, like DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, I'm not sure, I've never used Blu-Rays, and I'm not sure how the controller talks to DVD drives (I mean, all I know, is it uses SATA, but I don't know the way data is requested and interpreted).
Still SCSI. SCSI over ATAPI if it's SATA, plain SCSI if it's USB.

Quote from: polemon on
I used a bunch of these over the years, and when it comes to optical drives, they're hella flaky.
Adapters like that usually only know how to translate between SCSI and ATA, so they get really confused when the drive is speaking SCSI via ATAPI instead of plain ATA. I have seen some that are advertised to work with optical drives, but I've never tried any of them.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Octocontrabass on
Quote from: polemon on
I used a bunch of these over the years, and when it comes to optical drives, they're hella flaky.
Adapters like that usually only know how to translate between SCSI and ATA, so they get really confused when the drive is speaking SCSI via ATAPI instead of plain ATA. I have seen some that are advertised to work with optical drives, but I've never tried any of them.
Hm, wasn't aware the adapters understood any SCSI at all. I thought they're just (S/P)ATA to USB and then let the driver figure it out. All storage devices (including USB floppy drives and optical drives) use the USB mass storage device, I thought handling the anything that comes though (S/P)ATA is given directly to the USB host driver.
Kinda makes me wonder how USB floppy drives work, since there has to be either some sort of Shugart interface going on, or it's an entirely custom thing with directly driving the mechanics and heads.

Do you know how (dedicated) USB CD/DVD/BD drives work? Are they going through some sort of ATAPI channel, or is the controller directly doing USB mass storage and controlling the drive directly?

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: polemon on
Hm, wasn't aware the adapters understood any SCSI at all.
USB mass storage is SCSI.

Quote from: polemon on
Kinda makes me wonder how USB floppy drives work, since there has to be either some sort of Shugart interface going on, or it's an entirely custom thing with directly driving the mechanics and heads.
My USB floppy drive is an ordinary laptop floppy drive connected to a USB adapter through the laptop-standard 26-pin Shugart interface. That doesn't mean they all work this way, though.

Quote from: polemon on
Do you know how (dedicated) USB CD/DVD/BD drives work?
I would guess a dedicated controller that speaks SCSI over USB, but there's really nothing stopping the manufacturers from taking an ordinary SATA drive and integrating a USB SATA adapter into the logic board. I don't think I've ever taken apart one of them to see what's inside.

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Octocontrabass on
Quote from: polemon on
Hm, wasn't aware the adapters understood any SCSI at all.
USB mass storage is SCSI.
Wait, do you mean USB Attached SCSI (UAS / UASP)? Because that was only introduced in USB 3.0.
Prior to that, USB used USB Mass Storage Bulk-Only Transport (BOT). This is what I meant by saying "USB Mass Storage" since that's the name of the USB device class. I can find some information about ATA and SCSI (I don't mean UAS, I mean the SCSI over USB 2.0 using BOT). But  can't find much about ATAPI at all. The only thing I can find is this section on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_mass_storage_device_class#Design

Quote
Some advanced hard disk drive commands, such as Tagged Command Queuing and Native Command Queuing (which may increase performance), ATA Secure Erase (which allows all data on the drive to be securely erased) and S.M.A.R.T. (accessing indicators of drive reliability) exist as extensions to low-level drive command sets such as SCSI, ATA and ATAPI. These features may not work when the drives are placed in a disk enclosure that supports a USB mass-storage interface. Some USB mass-storage interfaces are generic, providing basic read-write commands; although that works well for basic data transfers with devices containing hard drives, there is no simple way to send advanced, device-specific commands to such USB mass-storage devices (though, devices may create their own communication protocols over a standard USB control interface). The USB Attached SCSI (UAS) protocol, introduced in USB 3.0, fixes several of these issues, including command queuing, command pipes for hardware requiring them, and power management.

Seems if Op wants to play it save, he'd have to look for an enclosure with USB 3.0, since that'll probably implement UAS. (good luck finding a 5.25in drive bay enclosure with IDE ports...)

Perhaps find a 5.25in enclosure for optical SATA drives (with USB 3.0 on the other end), and then use an IDE-SATA adapter inside?

Re: Optical drive enclosure with IDE interface?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: polemon on
Wait, do you mean USB Attached SCSI (UAS / UASP)?
UAS is an improvement over MSC, but both are SCSI.

Quote from: polemon on
But  can't find much about ATAPI at all.
ATAPI is an extension of ATA to squeeze SCSI through a connection that only supports ATA. In order to use ATAPI over USB, you would need to then wrap those ATAPI commands in SCSI.

Quote from: polemon on
Perhaps find a 5.25in enclosure for optical SATA drives (with USB 3.0 on the other end), and then use an IDE-SATA adapter inside?
If you choose this option, make sure the IDE/SATA adapter supports optical drives.