Problems with 2.5 to 3.5 drive adaptors

[Parangles]

I have had very hit and miss results with using the little inexpensive adaptors
to connect a 2.5 laptop hard drive to the IDE ribbon cable that connects desktop
hard drives.Sometimes it works and with the same connection next time it does not.
"Primary drive not found" is a common error and the PC will not boot.
Other times the new drive is not recognised.
There is little or no information via Google or supplied with the adaptors.
Maybe a good guide can be pieced together here. I have spent a very long time on
trying to get these adaptors to work.
I have used two different types of adaptors- hopefully you'll see photos attached here.

This is the proceedure I have followed:
Pin 1 on 40 pin laptop drive connected to Pin 1 on adaptor
(Pin1 on 2.5 laptop drive often not marked,but usually the upper pin on the
side with the 4 jumper pins on the right side and 40 pin array on the left.)

Pin 1 on the adaptor side with the 44 pins is connected to the red stripe of the
IDE ribbon cable.The cable often has one center pin blocked out so it is hard
to connect this side incorrectly.

Power - no problem -5volts- I check with meter if I dont feel the disks spinning
when it boots up and doubt whether it is getting power.

Now- where to attach the 2.5 drive.? I've heard that its better to connect it as
a secondary on the CD/DVD drive cable. When I do this I lose recognition of the
CD/DVD on boot up.And it still gives problems.
Attach it as the secondary on the hard drive cable and I get "no OS' or "primary drive -NONE"
etc on boot up.

To jumper or not ? That is the question. I have heard- no jumper is neccessary on the
laptop drive, especially not on CD/DVD cable.
Both my Hard drive and DVD drive are jumpered to Master/Primary and are obviously at the end of the cable. On the laptop drive I have tried -no jumper/cable/slave with no
consistent effect.

Laptop drives not good? no- Ive tried many.

Boot sequence ? Don't recall- will look if that is a possibility.

Any comments will be appreciated.

Chris

[Panama Red]

Here's my method of using the adapter. I keep a 40 wire ide cable attached to the adapter and have an open IDE socket on my mobo. I also keep a 4 wire molex connector loose in the bottom of the case. If there's an adapter on the drive, carefully remove it. So far, I haven't seen a 2.5" with any jumpers installed. Pin one is typically on the opposite side from the jumper pins. If it isn't recognized on startup, shut down and turn the hard drive around on the adapter and try again. I'm only attaching these in order to save data or make an image of a customer's hdd so they always show up as an additional drive. HTH

[glc]

You do need to research the jumper scheme for the drive and attach it accordingly. The drive probably defaults to master/single or cable select.

[Parangles]

I would like to try jumpering the laptop drive...a possibility.... but I have never seen a jumper on any of the dozens of drives I have acquired over the years. The 3.5 desktop drive jumpers fit very loosely...maybe I'll make one with a piece of foil.

[glc]

If you don't have any jumpers, you need to research what the "no jumper" configuration is, and cable accordingly.