ATA Convertor

[porthas]

I got a few drives with CE-ATA. Anyone got a solution yet?

[moidah]

Hi ppumkin,

You said you used a bridge to deal with the smaller CE-ATA ZIF interface. Could you tell us what you used, please?

[Touchclarity]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone have a solution for these as yet...... been searching around (a lot) and come up with a big fat Zero so far.....


There MUST be something out there!!!......

All the best....

Steve..

[rtg20]

I've got nothing either...wish the people who claim to have something working would share. Pleeeease...?!

[data-medics]

I hate to awaken such an old dead topic, but has anyone found a solution to convert these CE-ATA to SATA yet? I know they have USB adapters like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Toshiba-M ... B00KZIBGJG but the drive I'm working on has a lot of bad sectors, so USB will be a real pain.

[fzabkar]

http://www.esskabel.de/upload/files/pdf ... E40_EN.pdf

[data-medics]

That would be great if I had a ZIF or LIF drive (in fact I've got a half dozen adapters for those), but this one is CE-ATA. Looks a lot like LIF but it's less than half the size.

[fzabkar]

The Amazon URL states that the product is a "CE-ATA USB Adapter Card For IPOD HDD Toshiba MK1626GCB Samsung HS161JQ".

The esskabel product has been tested with a Toshiba MK1626GCB. :?

[fzabkar]

I hate to awaken such an old dead topic, but has anyone found a solution to convert these CE-ATA to SATA yet? I know they have USB adapters like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Toshiba-M ... B00KZIBGJG ...

I confess I don't understand how this adapter works.

AFAICT it is based on Asmedia's ASM2042 controller:





According to Wikipedia, "CE-ATA is electrically and physically compatible with MMC specification. CE-ATA uses MMC connector on host devices and matching flex cable or circuit connection on CE-ATA hard disk drives".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE-ATA

The CE-ATA protocol transports ATA commands via the MMC interface by encapsulating them within MMC commands.

http://web.archive.org/web/200602101843 ... 1_gold.pdf

AISI, this means that the CE-ATA HDD is an ATA storage device that looks like an MMC. However, when I examine the following URLs, I can't see any reference to USB or CE-ATA or MMC/SD in the ASM2042 block diagram, nor can I see any SATA stuff on the adapter.


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... icasmedia/

ASMedia ASM2042 is a highly integrated Solid State Disk controller, bridge SATA host interface to NAND flash memory. ... It is designed with proprietary intelligent error correction circuit, wear leveling algorithm, and bad block management to provide strong data integrity and reliable SSD life cycle.

Support SATA 1.5/3.0Gbps Host Interface
Compliant with Serial ATA Revision 2.6

ISTM that, if the ASM2042 bridge does indeed have a SATA interface, then it may be possible to tap into it. That said, it may be that the SATA interface needs to be enabled in the firmware.

The adjacent flash IC appears to be a 4Mbit EEPROM for storing program code rather than NAND flash storage as in the block diagram:

http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datashe ... -4I-WH.pdf

BTW, the datasheet for the HS161JQ specifies a maximum interface transfer rate of 52MB/s, so perhaps USB 2.0 isn't too much slower.

http://www.seagate.com/files/www-conten ... S12UJQ.pdf