The performance of computer systems has been steadily increasing as faster processors, memory, and video cards are continuously being developed. The one key component that is often neglected when looking at improving the performance of a computer system is the hard drive. Hard drive manufacturers have been constantly evolving the basic hard drive used in modern computer systems for the last 25 years, and the last few years have seen some exciting developments from faster spindle speeds, larger caches, better reliability, and increased data transmission speeds.

This is a cable that allows you to connect an IDE device to your computer via a USB port. Version 2 has the same features as the original version, but adds one important feature to the mix. The first version only allowed for connections to devices using a full-sized IDE connector. This new version has a double sided connector. One side is for 3.5 inch drives and the other is for 2.5 inch (notebook) drives. That’s really the only difference with this newer version and the older version.

Hardware Spec

Fully supports USB 2.0
480Mbps high speed data transfer rate
Supports 3.5, 2.5 Hard Disks, CD-ROM(max. 52x), CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, Combo device
AC Power Adapter input : 100 ~ 240V, 50/60HZ, 0.5A
AC Power Adapter output : 12V/2A, 5V/2A

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see that the IDE connectors on the drives are keyed. There is a notch in the middle of plastic surrounding the pins. This notch is supposed to keep you from plugging in the IDE cable incorrectly, as the connector has a matching ‘key’ to the notch. Unfortunately, even with the ‘key’, you can still plug the connector in upside down. At least this was something that I was able to do with the 2 drives I tested it with. So, just make sure you pay attention to what you’re doing. You’ll also notice that there are little plastic jumpers to the right side of the IDE connector, and then to the right of the jumpers there is the power connector.

Here you see the connector plugged into one of the drives, and the included power adapter plugged into the power port on the same drive. The correct way to connect the drive to your computer is to plug in the IDE cable to the drive, plug in the power to the drive and then plug the USB connector into the computer. This product is compatible with PCs and Macs. Another area where the user manual is wrong is where it tells you to install a driver if you want to use this product with a Mac. I tried it with my G5 iMac without installing this driver and it worked just fine.

After you plug the USB connector into your computer, the drive should show up automatically either under My Computer on your PC, or as a newly mounted drive on your Mac desktop. From there you can treat it like any other drive by dragging and dropping files.

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