Ableconn IIDE-MSAT mSATA to 2.5-Inch IDE Adapter Converter with Aluminum Frame Bracket - Latch and Retain mSATA SSD as 9.5mm 2.5" IDE SSD Drive

I have three Apple Mac Mini G4's. Two I bought recently as New Old Stock with Leopard loaded. I wanted to convert the two new ones to run Linux, but also wanted to swap out the 80GB 5200 rpm hard drive for an SSD. Like most laptops of the era, the 2.5" hard drive interface is a 44-pin IDE (PATA). These hard drives are getting harder to find since most manufacturers stopped making PATA drives and switched to SATA over 10 years ago. Finding an SSD with a 44-pin PATA interface is basically unobtainium.I looked at the white and black enclosed models that are cheaper. Two issues from viewing photos. The mSATA SSD sits inside a closed case with no air circulation. And most designs have a voltage regulator very close to the SSD. The Mini is already a tight design. I worried that the lack of air flow would make the SSD run hot and shorten its life. This unit has an open frame design, and no voltage regulator near the SSD. The mounting frames also looked rugged. I bought one to try, along with a new Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB mSATA SSD.Installation was easy (once I cracked open the Mini's case). The adapter fit perfectly, and I could easily reuse the mounting screws. I inserted the SSD onto the adapter without a problem. One advantage of this design - you can easily change or upgrade the mSATA SSD without having to remove the adapter. I had no problems with the SSD mounting retainer.From the Linux livecd install disk, I was able to format the disk to hold five partitions. There were no bad blocks found. When Linux booted, it showed the Samsung 850 EVO as present with support for ATA-7 and UDMA/133. The Mini's controller is limited to ATA-6 and UDMA/100, but it does support LBA-48. hdparm measured 92.0 MB/s reads; the hard drive measured 35.4 MB/s, so this is 2.6x faster (and about 3x more capacity). The computer feels peppy. I clocked booting (from selecting the kernel to login prompt) at 13 seconds. WOW!I was quite pleased with the results. So much so, I bought a 2nd unit to convert the other Mini. The computer has been running for several weeks now, uptime for 10 days at one point, with lots of long compile jobs (I'm running Gentoo Linux, which builds from source). Stability is rock solid.This solved a problem I had quite well. My only concern is the future life of mSATA. New laptops appear to be transitioning to M.2 and MVMe. Some manufacturers, such as Crucial, have stopped making mSATA drives. Others, like Kingston, have come out with new designs (the KC.600) with higher densities. Prices have fallen due to competition and transition to newer technology, so there are lots of good deals out there (I picked up the Samsung SSD new for $40, used ones are about half that). I'm quite satisfied with this product, glad Ablecomm made such a device for a rather niche market, and happy I could buy it on Amazon.

I have a 15 year old Dell 700m laptop that I really liked. It has apps that I accidentally deleted from other PCs plus some apps that don't run well on WIN 10 in compatibility mode. It was too old for a Chromebook upgrade. It was not upgradable to WIN 7. The BIOS did not support AHCI and would run the mSATA transparently thru the IDE/PATA interface . I had a 32Gb mSata card pulled from another laptop, found the Ableconn IIDE-mSATA and figured that I could put the mSATA in the Ableconn, connect it to a 44pin USB 2.0 adapter that I had and connected it to the Dell. It worked, I was able to format the mSATA and I bought a 128Gb mSATA card (Zheino M3), repeated the effort on the larger mSATA. I had to buy AEOMI Backupper Pro ($39; the freebee won't clone a disc) and replicated the 80Gb Hitachi HDD. Installed the Ableconn w/mSATA in the 700m. It replaced Hitachi HDD perfectly, no need for the provided screws. It booted immediately, ran beautifully for a day, then slowed down. the barely ran. Pulled the mSATA and did some homework: Removed the master/slave jumpers from the Ableconn, left the unused portion of the mSATA unformatted, (I had created a partition in this space) and downloaded SSD Tweaker (free) to set the WIN XP parameters for optimum SSD performance.Re-Cloned the HDD > mSATA, reinstalled in the 700m and the PC has been running beautifully since. Not sure what fixed the original problem but its 20 sec to Logon, another 20 sec to useful work. Outlook 2007 takes a long time to startup, but then just fine. It's not as fast as native mSATA since its running thru the 44pin EIDE interface but its a much more useful PC and I don''t dread the wait time when I boot it up. I also upgraded to SSD Tweaker Pro ( $9) get the Trim function. This cost more than expected, primarily due to the software needed.I consider the Ableconn IIDE-mSATA adapter an elegant solution to providing longevity to an old,still useful and I will say it, a beloved PC.PS: After a day of heavy use I had another recurrence with the slowdown at startup and was going to revert to the HDD, left it to do the next day. When I sat down to revert to the HDD, just to check, I pressed power and the 700m booted up immediately and ran with no problems. I'm not sure what the problem was but recall an old item I read online: letting a PC with an SDD 'idle' before shutdown, say after Windows logoff, so it can reorganize itself. (Finnicky little devils aren't they?) Also my battery is only good for an hour + so the 700m is usually plugged in, which might get power to the mSATA before the OS is up. Either way, I am satisfied with the Ableconn, it did the job.