Many people would find it useful to be able to temporarily – and inexpensively – connect a bare hard drive to a Mac. For example, if you work in IT and do a lot of drive-swapping, or even if you’re an average person who has purchased a hard drive to upgrade a desktop or laptop Mac, it would be nice to plug into your Mac, copy your files from your current hard drive, and then swap the drives and be up and running immediately.

Newer Technology’s USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter lets you do just that. The Drive Adapter is a cable with a USB plug at one end and a multi-interface – SATA, 2.5-inch ATA, and 3.5 -/5.5-inch ATA – connector at the other. Using the Adapter, along with various combinations of other included cables and a power adapter, you can connect almost any hard drive to your Mac’s USB port. (For more details on these combinations see macworld.com/2626).

Once you make the connections, the drive should appear in the Finder just like any other external USB hard drive – except, of course, that the drive is naked to the world, rather than in a case. Because the connected drive is left unprotected, the Drive Adapter is designed for temporary use; you don’t want to use it in lieu of a dedicated drive enclosure. The only trouble I had was when a particular 2.5-inch ATA drive didn’t appear to get enough power from the USB port on a MacBook. Still, for only $25, this is quite a handy tool. As someone who does quite a bit of testing and trouble-shooting I plan on keeping one close at hand.