I am trying to use a USB 2.0 to IDE adapter to mount a drive I pulled from one of my old machines. The drive is a WD Caviar 31300. The USB 2.0 to IDE adapter is basically a USB cable that connects on one end to the 40-pin IDE connection on the drive and on the other end to a USB port on my machine. The adapter also includes a power cord. With the IDE connector attached to the drive, I have tried attaching the USB connector and then powering up the drive and also powering up the drive and then connecting the USB connector. I would expect to be able to mount the drive like any other USB storage device using /dev/sda(n), but lsscsi doesn't show the drive to be attached. I checked `tail -f /var/log/messages` and I get this:

Jan 3 20:02:49 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 88
Jan 3 20:02:50 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 89
Jan 3 20:02:50 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 90
Jan 3 20:02:51 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 91
Jan 3 20:02:51 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 92
Jan 3 20:02:52 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 93
Jan 3 20:02:52 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 94
Jan 3 20:02:53 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 95
Jan 3 20:02:53 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 96
Jan 3 20:02:54 trooper kernel: usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 97

It runs up through address 127 and then starts over at address 3, running continuously through all the addresses.

Is there something special I should know about using one of these adapters? Has anyone had any success using one?

Okay, I have one of these cables and I have used is successfully with an IDE CD-ROM and another IDE CD-RW drive to both rip and burn CDs, with USB 1.1 on my laptop. In SUSE 10.0 I just plug it in with the laptop booted to the KDE destktop (power and USB cable in any order) and after inserting a CD a couple of times in KDE (3.5.0) it works like any other drive (cdparanoia finds it at /dev/sr0/ I think). For some reason it seems to take maybe 30 seconds or 1 minute to be recognised (e.g. if I change my drives over) but works fine after that. I haven't yet tried it with a hard drive, and don't have one handy to do so.

This isn't just a KDE thing, as it has worked in text mode with cdparanioa: original 10.0 kernel 2.6.13-15.7-default (no nongpl).

So, if I understand you correctly, you are telling me I should just be patient, and it will pick it up after a short wait?

I am willing to try that. I will plug it in and leave it to see what happens.

Yes, for me with my CD-ROM drives, the drive seems to work straight away if I plug it in then boot the computer, and it works the second or third time I insert the CD if I connect the drive after booting to KDE.

Maybe leaving the power cord in, but reinserting the USB cable a couple of times will have the same effect for your hard drive. I don't think that pulling the power cord in and out is very good for the drive as I think spinning it up from cold is the most stressful part of its use.

Well, you are probably more patient than I am. It appears that this thing is going to continue cycling through addresses until the cows come home. I tried attaching it and booting with it attached (man, I hated losing all that uptime!), but that didn't work either. My machine ended up hanging on boot - waiting for this thing to decide what address it wanted, I suppose.

I am going to give up on this, and just install each of these drives in another machine I am building here. Really, all I wanted to do was clean the drives off before reformatting them to use eslewhere, so it won't be a problem. The new machine is going to be a fileserver anyway, so that will be a good place for whatever is still on these drives.