My Newest Gadget

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 995 Location: Central FL, USA

Geeks, hackers, tinkerers, gadgeteers UNITE!

Here's my latest Gadget to make work in the PC shop just a little bit easier.

<<-- click to expand

This is a USB2 cable, terminating in a module with a standard IDE connector on one side, a laptop IDE connector on the other side and a SATA drive connector in the middle.

This came in a Generic box (made in China) with no brand or model #.
Don't ya jus luv it when that happens? Wink

On the back of the box, it says that a SATA and IDE drive can both be connected at the same time, and files can be transferred from one to the other. I have NOT tried that yet. Confused

This little Gadget was ordered for me by a friend, from "Tampa Software" in Tampa, FL. The price tag on the device was for $19.95.

This Gadget should be another "Must Have" device for every service tech or PC enthusiast.

Cheers mates!
The Doctor

PS: If you have a favorite Gadget, lets see it!

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 995 Location: Central FL, USA

It works!

I put a known good IDE drive on one side of the Gadget and my new Seagate SATA2 drive on it's own socket and plugged in the USB Cable.
I connected power to both drives and turned on the computer.

NOTE * SATA drives are HOT Swappable, but IDE drives are NOT so they must be connected with all system power OFF. IDE drives will initialize like any internal drive, on boot up.

I successfully copied files from the IDE drive to the SATA drive, using Copy & Paste.

VOILA! EUREKA! HURRAY! It works.
Or to quote Dr. Frankenstein, "It's Alive!"

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor Cool

bern · Joined: Mar 12, 2007 Posts: 731 Location: ann arbor

goretsky

Hello,

If you have a lot of SATA hard disk drives to work with, Thermaltake has a version of this which adds a plastic guide for 2.5" and 3.5" hard disk drives. More information here on Thermaltake's web site. We have a couple of them at work, but I haven't spoken to anyone who has used them, so do not know how reliable they are.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 995 Location: Central FL, USA

Looked a like it could be a bit pricey for us "Po'boys".

There was no price listed so I went to the "Buy It" page but got an error message and the page would not display. That's OK, I'm not going to buy one.

Doc

goretsky

Hello,

The least expensive one I found was $32.00, not counting tax, shipping and handling. I think it really is geared more at IT staff who are constantly re-imaging hard disk drives. I can see where having an eject button would be useful if you had to image more than a few hard disk drives a day.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2378

For anyone looking for a gizmo like drwho07 just purchased, here' one

http://www.buy.com/prod/usb-2-0-to-ide-sata-converter-cable-by-eforcit.../loc/11
for $9.89 (this includes the shipping)