Thursday 6 March 2008

2.5" & 3.5" IDE/SATA to USB Adapters - Huge Time Savers!

The other day, one of the technical people on an email list for the Taurus V8 SHO that I personally belong to mentioned a tool that is one of those, "Why didn't I think of that" tools.

That is, why did I think of the idea, and why didn't I think that someone out there may be selling it.

The idea is actually very simple: Plug a USB cable into a system with a bare hard drive plugged into the other end receiving power from an alternate source and we have access to the drive.

Here is a screen shot of what one variation looks like:

IDE/SATA to USB Adapter

What a brilliant idea!

This little gem is going to save us huge amounts of time when working with our Data Mule (previous blog post) system. No more shutdowns to install a hard drive!

This will make our data recovery, imaging, and hard drive erasing tasks that much simpler.

Thanks to Doug of the V8 SHO Email List for the tip! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got same adapter it is great long usb cable put machine beside each other no need remove disk to pull user data to move new machines

Andy Asselin

Anonymous said...

Using adapters is the ONLY way I perform data recovery, imaging, copying, while the drive is attached to my work/tech laptop.

(For any onsite/offsite recovery, imaging, etc, I always remove the subject hard drive. It may be a powersupply/motherboard/memory issue causing corrupt data and I'm bypassing that possibility by removing the drive. Besides while performing the hard drive work, I can test power supply, memory and visually inspect the MB.
(I have NO clients which cannot turn their computer off at some point in time)

Sometimes I have 3 or more of these adapters going at the same time on the same laptop.

The adapters have been available for around 7 years now.

The particular adapter you showed is not one that I particularly care for.

There are better brands with better features, like integrated power ON/OFF switch, multiple end connectors (a FULL sata connector), Better implemented translation scheme, etc.

In the past I've run across an issue where some new adapters translation scheme (in it's internal BIOS) didn't quite work with a harddrive or an imaging attempt. It looks like it imaged but when restored, the computer cannot recognize the drive (at all) or boot from it. Weird. (using a different adapter fixed the issue, after losing a fist full of hair)

I've also found using two different adapters during a drive sector copying operation can cause weird issues. It all depends on the adapters in question and for my money, cheaper is not better.

ZC1
Beta tester of "0"s and "1"s