StarTech.com USB 2.0 to IDE SATA Adapter, 2.5/3.5" SSD/HDD, USB to IDE & SATA Converter Cable - Replaced by USB3SSATAIDE

The product was well packaged and included more than I realized... the single power cable was actually 3 power cables, one standard U.S., a two (round) pin European and a third massive three pin with a fuse in it, I believe it's specific to the U.K. There was also an auxiliary jumper from the the PS to the Adapter to augment low current USB ports if needed. The PS seemed more than adequate and stayed cool to the touch in operation. Documentation was good and I didn't need the drivers provided. A working HD was easily seen by XP and Windows 7. I also use a Windows 98 VM with the usual non-standard upgrades expected in something that has become mostly a hobbyist OS and that had no problems seeing the HD either. Seeing is not the same as using. The issue here is not the product, but the nature of the application itself. I started with a "good" HD that refused to power up. My best guess is that it just went bad sitting in the drawer, but it was an unexpected pain in the neck that left me wondering if the product worked. I tried a second HD that was seen by all three versions of Windows but wasn't mounting. Windows 7 was a bit more helpful in deducing that the drive had been wiped by the previous owner and once it was initialized all was fine. The lesson here is to first familiarize oneself with the adapter using an absolutely positively working HD first and then move on to sorting out the spares in the decommissioned bin. Based on the reviews I read of the various adapters available before I bought the StarTech, my priorities were to pick a product that (a) didn't start a fire (b) didn't kill my HD (c) didn't pollute my PC with a bunch of mickey mouse interfaces or drivers and (d) worked. I think I got a good deal with the Star Tech.

I purchased this adapter in order to clone the hard disk in my Toshiba A-135 laptop, which has no provision for a second HDD. The Startech adapter separates the communications adapter from the power supply and powers the comm adapter (not the drive) from the USB port, although the comm adapter can be powered from the separate power supply if you choose. The power supply has three outputs, one each for IDE or SATA drives and a third to power the comm adapter, if desired. There are separate indicator lights and power switches on the power cord for the SATA or IDE outputs. The switching power supply includes 3 cords to accommodate USA or overseas power sources. The adapter has communication status lights for the USB, SATA and IDE ports, which are helpful and reassuring. I first attempted to test the adapter with two (very) old IDE drives that had been out of service for many years, one of which I knew was working at the time it was replaced. Windows Vista recognized the adapter and (eventually) loaded a driver for the disk(s), but it would not mount the drive. Presumably, I could have formatted the drive since it appeared in device manager, but since I wanted to see what was on it, I did not. Satisfied that the device was communicating with Windows and that the power supply functioned under load, I connected my new drive, a Sandisk 120GB SATA III SSD, which was immediately recognized by Vista and the driver installed. I used Macrium Reflect (free) to clone the C drive and the process proceeded flawlessly, transferring 50+ GB in about 1.25 hours. When I replaced my C drive with the Sandisk SSD, it booted without incident. The Startech device performed flawlessly for the primary purpose for which I purchased it and I have therefore given it five stars. Since there is question regarding the old IDE drives that I attempted to read, I consider evaluation of the IDE interface incomplete. I may update this review later if I try other IDE devices.

I bought this to copy data from an old IDE hard drive onto my laptop. It worked perfectly for that use case. While I have not doubt it will also work well with SATA drives, I have not tried it for that use. If customers have difficulty with this product, I recommend the following steps. These recommendations are based on difficulties I sometimes had using an older generic IDE/SATA to USB adapter: 1) Disconnect everything 2) Connect the adapter to the SATA or IDE connector on the hard drive. IDE is not spec'd to hot connect, and it's possible that the adapter's SATA port also does not support hot connect. In any case, it's best that neither the hard drive nor the adapter be powered when connecting. 3) Plug in the wall wart, connect it to the power adapter, and connect the power adapter to the hard drive. You should hear the drive spin up (unless, of course, it's a flash drive). 4) Connect the adapter's USB plug to your computer. A new hard drive should now show up on your computer. At this point you should be able to use the drive the same way you'd use any other USB drive. When finished, disconnect the USB port, unplug from the wall, and disconnect power and the adapter from your hard drive.

My mom's laptop crashed and burned so she had to get a new one. She had several pictures and files on her old computer that she wanted to save, but the laptop wouldn't even boot up. I took her laptop to several local computer store chains and was told it would be about 100.00 to get the files off of her old laptop. She wasn't really sure exactly what files were on there or what she needed to keep so we didn't know if it was worth that to find out if there were things she needed or not. I noticed the stores were using this product to connect the hard drive, so I went home and found it to buy. Her laptop was old, so most of the other adapters didn't have the correct pin configuration to fit her hard drive. This one worked great. I was able to connect the hard drive from her laptop. This adapter provided the power needed to the hard drive, and I was able to go through her files to find any documents she might need or want to keep. Plus, it was really affordable!

Works as advertised. All necessary adapters to connect to common types of drives/devices. Versatile. Materials and build quality are what you'd expect in this price range. Instructions seemed a little vague/generalized to me, but I have no previous experience with this type device. Instructions imply that the process is more "automatic" than it is. I needed to extract files from a laptop hard drive that failed. Was able to figure it out and retrieve my files. Could also be used to transfer files from drive to drive (back up). I watched several You Tube videos on how to use this device and other similar devices before I attempted it. If you have experience locating, transferring, backing up files, you will probably be ale to use this adapter with little issues. If you're like me, a novice, you should still be able to get satisfactory results, as long as you do a little research first.

I ordered the Star Tech 2.5/3.5" SATA/IDE adapter to get data off a desktop 3.5" hard drive and it worked perfectly. The adapter I purchased came with a power supply to power the desktop hard drive. I connected all of the necessary cables in a minute or two and the desk top hard drive appeared on my laptop. I was able to transfer the data I needed to my laptop very quickly. The adapter came with a small CD that contains the driver but it wasn't needed in my case. It also comes with instructions but it is fairly self explanatory as to where the cables connect. If you are cloning a 2.5" SATA hard drive then you only need the cable and not the power supply to save some money. Spend $10 more and you get a very versatile adapter.

Ordered this item July 25, 2013 and received it the next day. My son had an Acer laptop that got fried after his son spilled iced Tea all over the keyboard. The laptop was about 5 or 6 years old but my daughter-in-law stored all her digital camera pictures on the hard drive. With the laptop fried, there was no way to retrieve the pictures. She gave it to a friend of hers to see if the pictures could be saved but with no luck. I asked her to let me look at the laptop to see what I could do. After getting the laptop, I found out real fast that there was a short circuit somewhere on the printed circuit board. I then proceeded to pull the hard drive out of the laptop, hoping that it wasn't crashed. Then I hunted around for a device that could both power up the hard drive and extract the information via USB2 connector. Google led me to Amazon where I hit on this device. After reading all the good and bad posts, I figured it was a crap shoot and maybe I would get lucky. So I ordered the StarTech USB 2.0 to SATA IDE Adapter (USB2SATAIDE) from Amazon. I had two other hard drives laying around both of which were IDE hard drives. The hard drive I pulled from my son's laptop was a SATA hard drive. I decided to test the adapter on the IDE drives first. When trying to plug the data pickup device to the IDE drive, I found that lining up the pins on the hard drive was challenging and very stiff. The first time I bent a couple pins on the hard drive. After straightening them out, I tried to plug the data pickup to the drive again. This time I was successful. I disconnected and reconnected the device to the hard drive a few time and the operation got smoother. As another poster noted, before hooking the USB2 connector to your computer, hook up the power supply and data pickup to the hard drive first and then turn the power on. If it doesn't blow up, then plug the USB2 connector to your computer. My OS is Windows 7 64 bit and the OS picked up the USB2 connection automatically, which meant that I didn't have to mount any drivers for the StarTech device. I opened Windows Explorer and found the hard drive listed as Drive F:. Opening the F drive, I reviewed the hard drive contents and copied a few files from the hard drive to a temporary folder I created on my computer hard drive. Seeing that this worked fine, I then disconnected the USB2 connector ONLY AFTER CLICKING ON THE USB ICON IN SYSTEM TRAY REQUESTING TO DISCONNECT THE USB2. After getting confirmation that the USB2 was safe to disconnect, I pulled the USB2 connector from my computer. I shut all power off to the Startech and disconnected the IDE hard drive. Now I connected the hard drive from the laptop. This hard drive is a Toshiba HDD2D92 SATA hard drive. After connecting the power cable to the SATA hard drive, I hooked up the SATA cable from the hard drive to the data pickup device. Upon completion, I then powered up and no mushroom cloud. I then plugged the USB2 connector to my computer and Viola! I had access to the laptop hard drive. To make sure I didn't run up against any locked folders on the laptop drive, I took ownership of the whole drive. I found where the camera pictures were located and copied them over to a temporary folder on my hard drive. There were 4900 pictures in all. All told, it took me about 3 hours to do all the above steps. Since I'm retired, I work slowly making sure I don't take any shortcuts that could create problems. This item worked as advertised. Not recommended for long term usage as an aux drive connection. It takes up too much room on my desk and has to be close (~15 inches) from the USB2 receptacle. I highly recommend this item for emergency hookup to a hard drive that is removed from it's parent computer. Oh, by the way, there is an instruction booklet included in the package, but I didn't notice it until after I was done doing my transfers. The connections are intuitively easy. Even a caveman can do it.

I love this device. It's worth spending the few extra bucks to get the quality and warranty included with the StarTech.com cable. I recently threw away an old computer but kept its two internal IDE hard drives, an internal IDE DVD burner, and an internal SATA (which I had a device to convert it to IDE) DVD burner. My two hard drives now work through my laptop's USB port. All I had to do is plug them in, power on the cable, go to Disk Management in the Control Panel, and assign and partition the volumes as NTFS. This took two minutes per drive. My DVD burners worked immediately (one as IDE and the other as SATA) and burn much quicker than my laptop's internal burner. This product works exactly like I had hoped. One thing to keep in mind is that using this to plug in old drives is not the best idea for storage you need to access and manipulate often. Data transfer is slow. I have a 2 TB external hard drive and am now using these old internal hard drives to back up all data on that drive in case in breaks. For this purpose, only using the cable once a month or so to back up data to these old drives, I highly recommend the adapter.