Tools of the trade – USB2.0 to IDE & SATA Cable
Today is the first chance I”ve had to try out my new usb/ ide adapter “in the field”. I have previously used external ide enclosures for either laptop (2.5″) or desktop (3.5″) drives as well as larger (5.5″ cdrom’s) But, it was a bit of a nuisance to have to remove the drive that I had in the case and carrying around an empty case seemed like a waste, so I ordered this from Newegg.com It’s made by Sabrant (in China..) and is designed to connect any IDE or SATA drive to the usb port.
I haven’t tested the SATA capability at this point, but I’ve tested with a laptop hard drive as well as a standard hard drive (and cdrom). I should mention that the unit comes with SATA cables and a power supply (and an adapter to use the power supply to add power for a laptop drive (for improved stability?) The ONLY problem I’ve seen thus far is that on one particular cdrom drive the ide connector and power plug were so close together that the rounded end (opposite the usb cable) protruded and kept the power adapter from fitting. On mine, I just shave the little “triangle” of plastic off that side of the power molex and managed to get the power and data cables to connect simultaneously.
In this case a picture might help illustrate the problem I ran into, but the black adapter case extends a bit past where the caonnector to the IDE device is (it’s the end that has the SATA plug). It extends enough so that if the power adapter is built immediately adjacent to the IDE pins on the drive you MAY run into problems.
Outside of that issue (which might be solved by a short male-female ide adapter cable), it seems to work just fine and be automatically detected in Windows XP/Linux as far as I’ve tested. (Mac OS compatibility claimed as well.) The item code on the box for this thing is USB-DSC5 and the manufacturers name is nowhere to be found, but it’s a useful cheap adapter for quickly hooking a drive up to a system.
(My only other wish than a short male-female extension cable for the IDE would be some sort of small carrying case (other than the box) something like a small pull string pouch.)