The USB 2.0 to IDE Cable Version 2

Need a quick way to get that IDE/ATA-based drive rolling in your system, or just don't have any more spare room to cram one in there? Enter the USB 2.0 to IDE Cable Version 2. It, uh, pretty much does what it says, adapting your internal hard drive (2.5-inch and 3.5-inch, etc.) for external use (only temporarily, we hope). The Gadgeteer took it for a test drive and found it to be pretty useful for $35. Hardware tweakers, mount up.

[Michael @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I have one of those and half the time the drive doesn't show up in XP, not sure what the problem is, but it's annoying.

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

That's really cool. I can already see it being useful.

[FierceDeityLink1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Eh... I see the purpose in this, but I'd rather pay $10 more and get a nice 3.5" case with USB2 and Firewire.

[PDubNYC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Nice, i could see that coming in quite handy. I'd lilke it even more if Firewire was an option

[Felix @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Newegg's had these for a while. A number of users have problems with them, like #1.

[Cheeze @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

These are actually pretty handy. I ran out of IDE busses in my server, and was able to get two of these, mount the drives inside the oversized case, and run the extra drives off of USB2.0 instead of normal IDE.

I guess I bought version 1 of it though, as one of them worked fine for a few hours, then corrupted the drive. It hasn't worked correctly since. The other one is still running with no problems and saves me from having to have ANOTHER *external* drive.

Just because it's USB doesn't necessarily mean it's external.

[Oliver @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

i wish i had one of these when i upgraded the hard drive in my powerbook last month.. :-(

[Ken C @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Its a cheaper External hard drive. I gotta get me one of these

[js @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

This could be an excellent way to transfer data from an old to new replacement pc.

[squid729 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

bought one of these from pcmicrostore and yep! when using with a 3.5 hdd only works some of the time, very unpredictable and disappointing. will not work at all with zip or cd drives. have not tried with a 2.5 drive yet. i buy test and sell a lot of ide/atapi 3.5 drives and thought it would save me shutting down, attaching the drives, and re-booting to test them. it hasnt!

[David @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

got one about a week ago from http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:10502715
no relation to them, but got it in about 2-3 days shipped free for $18. haven't tried it yet but i thought it would come in handy

[Markus @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I have Problems with my external IDE drives. They are not recognzed every time I connect them via USB. Is that a "normal behaviour"?

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

For more permanent use (ie with just one device) the ones with an enclosure are probably better. Most help dissipate heat or have an actual cooling fan mounted in them.

But around the shop, when you are swapping all different kinds of drives all the time on a more temporary basis, it is a great tool. Particularly if you need to quickly image or access a laptop hard disk and the lappy itself is dead. Saved me hours of time (though admitedly the enclosure type would have done the same thing).

And as a sys-admin I end up getting the worst left overs for my personal computing needs, and these things help wring every last drop of use out of parts on their last legs...

And yeah, just for fun I used one of these for a while 'internally'. It was kind of amusing to finally find a use for that 5th usb port on my add-on usb 2.0 card...

[blarg @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

ya i have been haveing some probplems with this but on the other hand its nice to be able to just reach in to a case and plug it in to the hdd and my laptop so i dont have to unmount a drive to copy it/tweak it to get that dam copy of xp yo boot ;)

the other nice part is it does both laptop and standerd sized drives (just not at the same time =[)and the fact that it can deal with my dvd burner is nice i can just make the rounds with the cable and drive and get all my systems backed up on to dvd with out haveing to take them all apart or bogdown the network

[n8 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I made my own from an old USB2 external Que CD burner - I just removed the control board and purchased a laptop drive converter. Now I use it to get data off just about every failed computer my friends and family have. My solution is less elegant, and about the same price, so this looks pretty good.

[deslock @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I use several external enclosures as well as a USB/IDE cable where I work. The cable is faster for troubleshooting or Ghosting drives since it's one less machine we have to open up.

OS X consistently mounts external drives but XP sometimes wont assign a drive letter or doesn't recognize external drives properly. We can usually get it to work by reconnecting it a couple times.

[Sheridan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Sabrent has a cheaper one for about $20 on tigerdirect.com and it does 5.25" drives too. I save my friends tons of time when using it to back up stuff with an internal DL DVD burner. It's especially handy when after upgrading to a bigger HDD, use the cable to make the old one and external

[Omatsei @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I'm one of the 2 tech guys at a major department in a major university (one of the "Big 10"), and we've had 3 of the USB 2.0 version of this for about 6 months now. It cost us about $25 each, but we use them all the time. Whenever someone's hard drive starts to go, we hook it up, get as much data off of it as possible, then get the HD replaced... when the new one comes in, hook it up the same way and send the data back. It's faster and easier than networking the computers. I don't know why some of you guys have had problems with them... the only problems we've EVER had with our setup is when the drive itself starts to die. We continually use the adapters to troubleshoot and back up data... never had an issue with them whatsoever.

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

To all those saying that XP doesn't always mount the drive. I suggest that if you haven't made this your habit already, when this happens, in computer management check 'Disk Management' and 'Logical Drives' as well. I've noticed XP sometimes doesn't do a very good job of DYNAMICALY (sp?) assigning drive letters and stubbornly wants to assign a letter already in us to the new drive (usually E:).

Basicaly you'll see the hard drive in there, but with no letter assigned to it, thus it doesn't show up in MyComputer/Windows Explorer.

If you already have a network share or other removable media using that drive letter, disconnect it, and the USB drive will immediately get it's assignment.

That might not be YOUR problem specifically, but it's worked for me a couple times...

[Adam @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

That. Kicks. Ass.

Now where the #$%@ is my VISA.

[BobbyW @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

If an internal drive isn't enclosed do you have to worry about cooling issues?

[cybercoach @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Seems to be a "Version 2" which may address chipset or intermitent compatibility issues. Anyone have any intelligence on this, and know where to find version 2 implementations???

[Alex @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

i bought 1 of these a few days ago. i'm trying to connect a 250GB hard drive (has 2 ntfs partitions inside) to my mac mini but the mac doesn't recognize it at all. (as a side note, i also tried plugging it into a dvd burner to the mac and it worked just fine, so i dont think it is the cable's problem) does anybody know how to get it to work?

[Undrhil @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Just checked as USBGeek.com and found that this device is actually listed on their website as being $17.00 ... maybe they lowered the price after this review went up?

Undrhil

[ike @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I bought it from Hongkong for USD5(Five USD) including AC adapter
It supports 2in1 -- 2.5" and 3.5" hdd.

[jorellh @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

This is the only device which has made my Mac give a kernel panic.

[Bryant Choung @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

#26, did yours feature two USB dongles? I still havent figured out why mine has 2 dongles

here is my review. it was only 2 dollars for this adapter.

http://www.bryantchoung.com/archives/2004/09/review_hard_dri.shtml

[William @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I brought one of these 2 Sundays ago at the local computer swap meet here in Australia for $35AUD.

Only thing is that you have to remember, to power off, pull the plug (as opposed to having an on/off switch somewhere).

I've connected it to various drives from my old computers lying around at home (including: 60GB Maxtor HDD, 4x DVD-Rom)

[boe @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Do they make something like this for laptop drives?

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

#29 - the 2 dongles are because some USB ports don't provide enough power for the drive, the extra plug guarantees you'll get the needed power.

[Patrick @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

The problems described here really sound like the cable is not providing enough power to spin the drive. That happens to some HDDs that are a bit more power hungry than others (5400 rpm vs. 4200 rpm). In this case, yes this will damage the drive as it keeps trying to spin... but it can't. I killed a 20gb drive once like that.

Morale of the story: The cable should have an optional AC plug for those finicky drives. If it doesn't, you're going to run into problems.

[stingraze @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I think I see these type of things selling for less than $16 or so.. hmm

[christopher @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Cheap chipsets can cause you to lose data; some can't handle NTFS block transfer greater than 64k, and consequently corrupt the drive. This looks like a HDD failure, but the proof is when you mount the HDD with a real IDE connection: you can partition/reformat and it works perfectly again.

-C

[DefMan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I have the one from pcmicrostore and had problems getting it to work until I figured out the trick... connect everything EXCEPT the USB first and give the drive a few seconds to spin up, like 10 or 15, then plug in the USB. Has worked every time since...

[Gabe @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

great tip 34, will order one and try it! good accessory with a laptop/desktop

[hafa @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

a true useful gadget, this will be handy to us Laptop repair techs.

[Dav @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I have one and use it frequently in a repair shop. Most of the time if it doesn't recognize a 3.5' drive it seems to be because of the drive's jumper settings. Some like to be Master - some work better on Cable Select.

[randy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I have the bytecc pcmicrostore one, tried it on 2 diff comps, 3 diff drives (20,80,160gb), all diff jumper settings. I'm convinced this is a piece of crap. Of course PCmicrostore doesn't support returns, just exchanges, and they charge a restocking fee, so if I get another piece of crap, my original cost is gone (with shipping and restock).. Gonna rate them bad on resellerratings and fatwallet and anywhere else I can.

[Morton Bodanis @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I want to buy a DVD burner. Someone tells me that
an internal drive is faster and less troublesome
than an external one connected to an USB 2.0 port

Which connection is preferable? Many thanks in
advance.

[Steve C @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Whenever I hook one of my hard drives up to one of these cables, windows recognizes the mass storage device, but I get a code 10 "Device Cannot Start" error when I look at it in Hardware Device Manager. Do any of you know what the deal is?