Saturday 31 January 2009

Computer Hardware - usb hard drive adapter, sata usb adapter


I have three IDE drives to try this on.

The Seagate 160G, never could get it to work.

Maxtor 160G, works every time.

Western Digital 120G finally got to work after setting drive jumper to Master with slave. Would not work when set to Master standalone.

Didn't try the ESATA.

Manual is the typical chinese translated to english type and doesn't have much in it.

Question you need to ask yourself if you're thinking of buying this is, do you feel lucky? Cables Unlimited USB-2110 USB 2.0 to IDE and SATA Adapter Cable with Power

First of all, i'm an I/T geek and i've used several of these adapters. This one works well but has a couple flaws:



CON's:

1) It comes with no instructions or spec's, which are necessary because of #2 ...

2) This device will not work if you connect it to a laptop running on battery power. I connected this device to my laptop's USB port. All three SATA drives were recognized but failed to be accessed until my I/T "spider-sense" tingled & I connected my laptop's A/C adapter. Now all of the drives are accessible.



Most users are not professional I/T geeks and would not be aware of this- they'd erroneously think the adapter was defective and likely return it.



PRO's:

So, as long as you connect this device to a desktop or laptop on A/C power, it'll work fine. One thing i particularly liked is the SATA power adapter cable is short, sturdy, and is shaped at a right to "idiot proofs" it from naive users who would otherwise yank it straight out by the (fragile) wires and not by the end piece.



I give it 4 stars.

I have two of these cable adapter units. One for my office and one for my truck. Don't leave home without it as you will inevitably run into a situation where you need it to fix one of your customer's computers.



Very handy and universal. I like this better than any other quick adapter I've used. Only once has it not worked with a hard drive. But that was a bizarre situation with a low RPM hard drive. I had to find a special PC to make data recovery with that hard drive work.



Excellent product.

Worked fine to transfer all data from the hard drive before sending my laptop in for repairs. I didn't need to go through driver installation procedures on the enclosed disk, just plugged it in and it was ready to go.

I have used this at least twice since getting it, maybe more. Although I haven't used it yet with an SATA hard drive, it does exactly what it says it will do with a regular (IDE) drive. I have had to get some information from an old computer and put it on a new one and that worked really well. I work in the computer/IT field at a small hospital so sometimes I have to migrate data from one computer to a new one and this allows me to do it without hassles. Here is a link to the amazon page for this product: USB 2.0 To IDE & Sata Adapter Cable With Power

I bought this to transfer data from my broken PC to my new Vista PC. The old hard drive would not directly connect to the new connections on my new PC. So, I got this product. The instructions were not the best, but the good thing is, I didn't need them. I just plugged it up to my old hard drive, then plug it into my new PC's USB port. Worked instantly. I could drag and drop files as I liked. Great product and will use again for backup purposes.

I find this type of adapter very useful. The very first unit like this I bought was this brand, I later bought a couple of cheaper models from a different company. The cheaper models work fine for shorter periods but if doing anything that requires more than a few minutes the cheaper models transformers overheat and the units quit responding. The Cables Unlimited model holds up without overheating, its about twice the price but certainly worth the extra cost. - Computer Cables - Usb Hard Drive Adapter - Sata Usb Adapter - Usb To Ide'


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