SABRENT USB-DSC5 Serial ATA (SATA) or IDE 2.5" and 3.5" to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter

Comment:
This device works well for IDE and SATA1... id doesn't work on SATA2 drives... i have to get a device for SATA2 from another company... it will FRY and SATA2 drive... this is the main complaint i have read... it doesn't say it will do SATA2.. but it doesn't say it won't either...

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This guy only works about 1/4 of the time. Most of the time the drives show up as 'USB device' and can't be accessed. No support from the Sabrent website. Do your self a favor and find another device, or find an external enclosure and use that.

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Ordered this product on the 15th and it arrived today. Tracking link said to expect it tomorrow. I was a little disappointed when I read the package and instructions as it did not say anything about Vista. I tried 5 different hard drives (9g 40g and 2 80g)and they all were recognized right away except my 200g, in windows explorer in Vista Home Premium. The 200g was dropped so I didn't expect it to work as the PC couldn't recognize it when it was installed either. So far so good.

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It completely didn't work, even on floppy drive.

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I can't say that I'm happy with this product - plugged in 2 working drives and all I get is a USB Mass Storage device under Device Manager. I can't find it elsewhere. I've tried testing it out on other computers and still the same. I would not advise getting this item as I've checked the Sabrent site and they don't even have visible support for this item.

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I have used the cable and power adapter for many data recoveries. I have only had it not work twice. One instance was the HD was physically damaged and the other was when the heads and disks in the HD were bad and the data was unrecoverable.

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This thing fried a SATA dirve but seems to work on IDEs. The power cable that goes from IDE to SATA is screwed up so you will need to get power another way. If I were you I'd consider other alternatives to hook up your drive. I'm looking for a utility to see if I can get anything of the SATA.

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One star rating is generous. This sad excuse for a bunch of wires fried a 30gb hard drive (see Nov.25 reviewers comments) & never did work right. I purchased in Oct. 2006. Since then, I contacted Sabrent & so far have not received replacement. I demanded a FULL refund...nothing. I'm thinking of class action suit to get my point across! Hope this review makes some impact. Sabrent is a four letter word.

Comment:
I bought this item a couple months ago. I used it for transfer data from customer HDD. IDE 2.5''/3.5'' are works fine. Lately, we had work w/ SATA 2.5''/3.5'', it did not recognize at all, but I can feel the drive spinning.

Comment:
This little gem did a great job. I had some old drives that I didn't know whether I could get them to work. They had data that I would like to at least check out to see if I needed it. Not all of them worked, but it wasn't the product's fault. Now they dropped the cost and made it an even better buy.

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Hands down the most useful tool for working with hard drives and other devices externally! Saved me when I had hard drive problems. I also was able to remove and back up my laptop drive when my laptop crashed.

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I purchased the adapter in December 2006, it worked fine for laptop hard drives. After some use on 3.5'' hard drives it began not to recognize the hard drives. After much frustration trying to check several different types of drives and even trying them on different computers the drives still did not show up anywhere. It was while reading the posts here I discovered that the power adapter may be the problem. I took an old XBOX that was Tango Uniform (DVD and hard drive trashed) and used it to power the 3.5'' drives. The drive was recognized in disk management and I was able to format the new drive. In January 07 I recommended two of my co-workers get one, they have been having the same problem. I would like to rate the device at a 5 but I can't as now I will have to drag my old XBOX around for power, or an old power supply from a pc, what a drag.

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I just bought one today, and couldn't get it working with my SATA Seagate 500GB harddrive using the included power supply (which has 4 pin IDE power) and the IDE to SATA power converter cable. When I used the power supply from the PC, the SATA drive works fine. On checking the 4 pin ATA power Molex connector on the Power Supply, I noticed that one of the ground pin is not connector at all!! so I think that is the cause of the problem. Checking the IDE standard, the power should be 12V / Ground for 12V / Ground for 5V / 5V, but checking the back of the power supply, they only provided 12V / empty / Ground / 5V, so the pinout from the Power supply which does not follow the standard. So some drives might and some other will not depending whether they depend on the missing ground pin or not. Not sure why they designed it this way. It's too bad becuse I really like the features and the functinality provided by this product.

Comment:
I have numerous HDs 3.5 & 2.5 and I needed something to clean, tranfer and simply check all the drives to know what was on them without having to install them in my computer or mount and dismount into my HD enclouser. This little deice is just what I needed and it worked perfectly without a hitch. I moved from HD to HD quickly and read the drives quickly and I was able to clean up my extra HDs. Do no thave much use for it right now but it saved me tons of time. I am sure I will be using it in the future again.

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Be careful with this product. The cheap power supply blew up a Maxtor 250GB of mine. There are transfer errors occasionally as well.

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The ATA/SATA/IDE interface to USB 2 is very good. The power supply is a loaded destructive gun! Worked with 10 hard drives, 40 to 500 GB. 6 were entirely satisfactory, 2 were probably bad to start, and 2 promptly started smoking and smelling. Burnout!! You could see where the chip on the hard drive bubbled. In my opinion, these power supplies are borderline bad. I was using two of the Sabrent units and both cooked a hard drive separately, a 200GB and a 250GB. Will use a converted ATX power supply in the future--it regulates and limits the outputs. No problems ever with Tiger!

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This product is hit and miss... mostly miss. It was disappointing as I'm a computer tech and this would have been a handy tool to save a lot of time. Out of 8 drives.. it only produced a drive letter for 2. I've tried in windows XPsp2 which is where I'd mostly be using it. One for the heap!

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Ordered this months ago, and it has been running well 24/24. It mounts automatically in Ubuntu Linux, and I have reformatted my 250GB drive using EXT3 instead of Windows FAT. I am currently using it for automated backups, just as if it had an enclosure. I am going to order one or two more for extra 160GB drives I have lying around.

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I purchased this cable adapter to add to my collection of tools & gizmos. Upon receiving it, I tried several hard drives out with none of them working with it. The power supply that came with it didn't work so the drives were not recognized. After realizing the problem, I connected the drive directly to the PC's power supply and everything worked great. The pc recognized the HDD right away and I was able to open files, copy files, and even format the HDDs. I will keep it as it can be a useful tool however, I am disappointed in the power supply that came with it. Hope you get one that works if you purchase this product. As for Tiger, I have no complaints at all...they have always been good to me. Ordered yesterday, received today. Super job Tiger!!!

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I really enjoy cables like this, very adaptable. Very simple to use, and if it's not working for you, check your drive, probably dead. Highly recommend for those who have extra drives laying around.

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Everything worked when I plugged in the usb cable. I had a drive from a dead laptop that I needed to salvage the data for family. I will soon perform other tests starting with SATA drives. I am an ''Old Techie'' starting from 286 MHz 640K of MB RAM, expanded further with full length RAM cards holding 1MB each... until nearly 6 years ago. Wow! So much has changed. This device delivered 100% of what I expected from it a second after it came out of the box. Connections were simple. I give it the highest rating possible!

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Killer product, saves me so much time when imaging drives, backing up or working on clients drives. Every tech should have one!!

Comment:
Works beautifully. I'm sitting here wondering why I didn't buy this years ago! What a relief not having to open up a case to plug something in to see what's on it, or save info from a failing drive. Definite time, and frustration saver!

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I purchased this primarily for a SATA 400GB drive and this review is primarily based off of my experience with this model drive. I was able, without any problem, to get the drive running and have it appear under Windows XP, as well as access it. I was also able to format the drive with it; however it was abnormally slow. Afterwards I tried to copy a couple 600Mb+ files (ISO Images) to the drive and I immediately began receiving Windows Delayed Write Errors. I attempted to try a number of fixes via the registry, drive settings, etc. found on the web and none fixed the problem. I tried the drive on a different XP machine as well as another machine with Vista - problems persisted. I was able to copy a small (less than 1MB file) to the drive. If it does work at all with SATA drives I'd have to assume it works with the 1st generation SATA drives and definitely not the 2nd generation. I would avoid buying this adapter (I returned mine); inst. get Item # M501-1180, which works well.

Comment:
Item works great. I have used this many times on SATA and PATA with no problems.