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.

Great product and served me well!

-- Easy to use-- I got access to my two old SATA drives-- access speed was much better than I was expecting!

I wouldn't recommend this device for creating a daily use external drive but if you are a techie that has to go through many different styles and sizes of internal drives this is for you. Heck at this price it is even worth it for the casual user who needs to get data off an old drive or just wants it for "just in case".If you image your primary drive this would be an option too. Drives are cheap enough you can image to a drive then just store the drive off-site. Beats the heck out of having to deal with a case based external solution. This is just plug in and go.It allows you to hookup most hard drives, modern and old, laptop and desktop, and read them via a USB port on your existing computer or laptop. No tiny screws to deal with or external cases to have to take apart and put back together just plug in the applicable plugs and plug it into your computer.The only real downside is having to have a power brick with it but that is not too big a deal. I travel with it when doing site visits and even with the power brick it doesn't take up that much space in my laptop bag.

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.

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.