USB adapter for disk drives

Posted by Des Dougan at Jun 13, 2009 03:22 PM | Permalink

Filed under: cool technology, technical support, cost effective

Have a disk drive from an old PC or laptop and need to get the data from it?

Occasionally, I will need to extract data from a hard drive that has been removed from a dead or dying PC. Up till recently, the way I did that was to mount the drive in an operational PC and copy the files that way. With the advent of 2.5" disk drives (normally in laptops) and newer driver connectors like SATA, that becomes more of a challenge. Enter companies like Vantec Thermal Technologies with their "SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter".

This neat little unit has a plastic body containing three different disk drive connectors linked to a USB connector on a short cable. It has a power adapter for full-sized 3.5" drives (the laptop drives are powered by the USB connector) and various cables to enable drives to get the power and connections they require.

It's then a simple case of plugging in the USB connection to one of your PCs, opening Windows Explorer and beginning the file copy.