SYBA Dual Compact Flash to 44 Pin IDE 2.5" Adapter Enclosure - SD-ADA45006

Pros: I used a Duracell UDMA 300x CF card with this in an old HP ZV6130US laptop. I needed to replace the old IDE drive to use this system for a side project and this product worked well. For this laptop I did not need to remove the middle pin. I have some problems with the XP Pro install but I do not know if it’s the card I used or the adapter. HDTUNE 2.55 benched Average Transfer Rate: 38.7MB/s Access Time: 0.5ms This is sufficient for my needs and I am pleased with the results.

Cons: I think the problem lies with the CF card and not the adapter, but XP detects the drive as a removable disk. This is not a problem for what I am doing but It has messed up some of the settings in XP Pro. Also there is nothing on the packaging to say if the middle pin is removable, they only mention that on their website. Again this is not a problem as the laptop will take it as-is.

Overall Review: It works for what I needed

Pros: Finally works on a Dell 600m! See other thoughts.

Cons: Don't know if it's the bus or the card, but only got 51MB/s with my Transcend 400X 32GB card (also from newegg). Had to break a pen and hack up the cheap plastic case for the Dell proprietary IDE adapter to make a connection with the mobo.

Overall Review: Got this for Christmas along with some ram and 32GB CF card. Tried everything to get this to work but after 2 hours of tinkering I gave up and considered it DOA. Order the SY-IDE2CF-NB25 as a replacement (which actually was DOA), but tried the first adapter without any of the housing and it worked! The dell hard drive caddy was blocking the connection since the screw holes needed to be moved about 3mm forward for it to make a connection. Ended up jerry-rigging the whole thing, but it works nevertheless.

Pros: Well, it does what it is supposed to if you have the room.

Cons: Other reviewer is right in that one of the pins should not be populated. This wasn’t a problem for me because none of the cables I had were nice enough to be properly keyed. I had a hard time attaching the IDE cable, almost like the pins were too large. However, the pins seemed to be in the correct location. The plastic was too wide by a mm or two. I was replacing the hard drive in a Fit-PC Slim (the orginal one, not Fit-PC2) and this adapter simply wouldn’t fit where the standard sized hard drive had originally been. It’s easy to detach the plastic if you need to (but then you’ve over paid). The adapter did fit in my T42’s UltraBay module with the plastic still attached though. So less exacting installs may be okay with the plastic.

Overall Review: Unlike what one of the other reviewer suggests, CF to PATA is pretty much a straight through connection. Any booting problems are most certainly not the result of this adapter.

Pros: works on my tablet

Cons: need install OS with only one CF on, add the 2nd after finished.

Pros: Simple way to replace a single 2.5 inch hard disc with (up to) two CF cards. Host chipset and BIOS/drivers permitting, it runs at least as fast as any other device I have used to connect the cards (USB, SATA, PATA, SCSI, PCMCIA, CardBus).

Cons: Not easy to remove standard cards (no eject button and the card sits flush). Microdrives are easier to remove but they extend beyond the case (and so limit where it can be mounted). Might not quite fit in a 9mm high bay if the bay is a close fit. Poor documentation.

Overall Review: Some BIOSes (particularly laptops and notebooks and smaller) assume only one hard disc in their hard disc bay and will ignore the 'slave' card. The OS may see the 'slave' card once booted, though. My Toshibas seem particularly obstinate about only seeing the 'master' card; my ThinkPads seem to be happy seeing both without problem. Some CF cards assume only one card on a host channel and do not play nice when there are two present (such as ignoring the drive select value and always responding to all commands on the bus, thus conflicting with the other drive). Some CF cards will not work at all as 'slave' drive (simply do not show up when 'slave' or always show as 'master' no matter which slot). I'm sure there are many other quirks, since most CF installations are single-card-per-channel by design. No problem fitting as far as I have seen on Toshiba or ThinkPad systems, but I don't own any of the 'smaller' systems (I usually buy the 'desktop replacement' class).

Pros: Works as advertised. Cheap way to get storage in an old laptop. Nice mount design. Put together with screws so you can easily take it apart if you bend and need to fix a pin.

Cons: Like the others mentioned, this is not keyed. If you have a keyed connector, you will need to modify it. I didn't have to, because the Thinkpads I was using it in are not keyed either. The pins are fragile and easily bent, so you have to be careful with it.

Overall Review: I didn't try to use two cards at once in it, so I can't comment on whether that works. Each slot did work individually, master and slave, as marked. In one instance, I plugged it in incorrectly and fried a CF card. Be careful, make sure you have it lined up right!

Pros: Unknown

Cons: Numerous Cons, First as mentioned in other posts here the KEY pin being in place prevented me from attaching the device into two Dell laptops, One HP/Compaq, and one older IBM. Second, Customer support, Product support in nonexistent at SYBA. All they can tell you is that they sell them and they work on their internal test equipment. I provided a link to the 44 pin layout which denotes pin 20 being the key pin and asked to what standard was their device manufactured too and all they could say is that it works with their internal test equipment. My guess is that they do not pay their tech support much money, either that or they like folks who couldn't make it at McDonalds. I thought about removing a pin but thought perhaps there was some newer standard I was unfamiliar with. Having seen these posts I see I can remove a pin. Thanks for that information. WHich should have come from SYBA..... if they knoew what a pin actually was :-)

Overall Review: I now know to avoid SYBA products.

Pros: Noticeable improvement in performance over the ATA100 drive. utilizes a standard 2.5" drive chassis which helps with laptop drive caddy mounting so the card isnt only held in place by the 44 pins, this is the reason i purchased this over the simple boards that are available.

Cons: One of the reviews mentioned poor performance on Win7 and beyond. My 30 years of experience wouldn't expect performance with these OS's on an ATA drive format, ATA is very slow in comparison with SATA.

Overall Review: Running Win98se on IBM T22 without issues using Kingston(P) and Sandisk cf cards.