Recommend an IDE/SATA to USB adapter..?

esuhl

I want to buy an IDE/SATA to USB adapter, and wondered if anyone had any recommendations?

Branded ones seem to cost just under £30, but obscure brands are available for a lot less (although judging by reviews some of them seem pretty badly made, but some seem to work just fine).

Is it worth the risk of getting a cheap one, or can they damage the drive they're connected to? I definitely don't want to risk that!

Ideally I'd want one that can cope with 3.5" and 2.5" IDE & SATA drives (and 1.8" would be handy too).

Can anyone recommend a cheap but good quality one? Thanks in advance!

GunJack

'spose you could try several cheapies, find a good one and still spend less than £30..... the dearer ones are probably made in the same factory with the same specs as the cheapies

Toxteth_OGrady

I use these:

http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=4197

Quality OK, simply does the job. Good supplier too.

alanwsg

I got one of these. Seems fine, lots of features .
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-HDD-Dock-3-5-2-5-SATA-IDE-Caddy-Enclosure-Case-eSATA-/300519920120?pt=UK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosures_RL&hash=item45f86211f8

andy2004

I bought 2 of the same ones Toxeth bought from ebay, paid about the same price for my two as he did for his one.
without the powersupply they can be picked up for about £2, with power £5 via ebay.

as for alanwsg whilst that maybe a better one, the better ones being released now have been changed so the hdd are flat instead of being on their ends due to the damage done to the hdds being inserted. aka the sata connection end. what i have read.

richard734

Maplins do one for £10ish, thats where mine came from. Not pretty and no enclosure, but it works

spud17

I've got a couple identical to those in togs post, but from ebay. Both adapters have been faultless.
However one of them I bought complete with the psu for 3.5" drives, the psu packed in after about an hour of continuous use.

MoneySavingUser

spud17 wrote: »

I've got a couple identical to those in togs post, but from ebay.

I ordered one too - only used it once but it did the job fine

It was this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-2-0-SATA-IDE-Cable-HDD-Power-Adaptor-UK-/270665027452?pt=UK_Computing_NetworkCards_RL&hash=item3f04e48f7c

Those docks like alanwsg look nice too - will have to try that some day

A.Penny.Saved

Get yourself a USB3.0 capable caddy and save yourself a whole heap of time. USB2.0 is far too slow, especially when you want to copy lots of large files.

I am on the look out for one myself but haven't found one that I like. Having a USB hub and card reader in addition to the hard drive interface would be ideal. USB3.0 is essential because I don't want to wait around all night when copying files at 25MiB/s with USB2.0.

andy2004

A.penny.saved usb 2 is a lot quicker than 25Mib/s on my old single core 1.85mhz processor i used to get upto 30mb/s but on my new hexa-core 3.0ghz system i get double that and more.
as my 2tb samsung drives are in usb 2 enclosures, and i moved all the files from a 1.5tb which was 90% full at the time, but failing, i used a program called teracopy which copied and checked each file after being copied, so approx 1.4tb worth of data from sata 1.5gb/s to a usb 2 2tb drive, in less than 1 day at speeds of 55mb/s, to do with the motherboard bus.

A.Penny.Saved

That is not a true transfer value because USB2 cannot transfer at that speed. The theoretical maximum is 480 Mbit/s (57MiB/s) which can never be achieved because of overheads. 480Mbit/s includes control information, checksums etc etc and not just the transferred data. Real world and 30MiB/s would be good going, possibly just over with everything working right.

Add to that, that USB2 is unidirectional only, unlikely USB3.0, which means that data can only go in one direction at a time. Therefore asking the controller for the data that is required also takes up some data transfer space, which prevents any data reads. It's physically impossible for USB2 to transfer at 55MiB/s.

USB2 is too slow for many fast memory cards, especially compact flash and hard drives are equally hindered as those fast memory cards.