Saturday, October 11, 2014

Newertech Universal Drive Adapter


By George Harding

To add, rather than replace, a hard drive means shutting down the computer or laptop, attaching power and communication cables, and then restarting the computer.

Now, there’s an easier way. The Universal Drive Adapter gives you to opportunity to attach an additional hard drive using only a USB connection and doesn’t require the computer to be shut down.

The Adapter is designed to work with 5.25”, 3.5” and 2.5” IDE/ATA drives, as well as same size SATA drives and solid state drives. External power is required and necessary equipment is included in the Adapter’s kit. The power cable has an On/Off switch, which is handy.

The Adapter itself is about 2 X 4 inches in size. It has several connectors, one for an IDE drive and one for a SATA drive, a power connection and a connection for the cable to the USB port.

Connecting the parts is simple. Once connected, transmission of data is by USB 3.0 and is backward compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1. Data rates are up to 200 MB/s.

The kit contains: Adapter, power supply and cable, USB cable with 3.0 connector, SATA data and power cable, IDE/ATA extension cable and Instruction Manual.

The unit I tested worked perfectly with a SATA drive, but none of the three IDE drives I tested worked. I tried the IDE drives on another computer, but still didn’t work.

Universal Drive Adapter by NewerTech                 
 www.newertech.com                   
 Price $28

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