When this USB hard drive adapter came out last year (USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter Serial ATA, ATAPI/IDE 3.5) I remember thinking that it sounded like something we ought to have on hand. First off, we've got more than a few old hard drives around which we use for reference, extra storage, or just because we like having paperweights handy. Then I forgot (mostly) about it until our Mac editor's drive crashed. I wanted to try out some data recovery techniques on it, but had to hook it up to something first.

I've got lots of ways to hook it up to a PC, but that's not much help. The PC Card adapter I've got for my Windows laptop wouldn't help me on my shiny new Macbook...because it has no card slot. Time, I said, to give the Newer Tech adapter a try.

Like anyone on a data recovery mission, I was in a hurry, so I sprung for overnight deliver, pushing the $29 cost up to about $44. It showed up right on schedule and comes nicely packed with adapters for several different IDE and SATA drive types, as well as a USB power adapter for laptop drives and a small power brick for bigger drives.

About the only problem I had hooking it up was figuring out which side to plug the ailing Mac drive into, but really that wasn't hard. As soon as I plugged the USB in the lights came on and the drive spun up. Unfortunately, it spun up to make a zoop, zoop, zoop, noise, indicative of a stuck head, and not something that drive recovery software can help with. A clean room and six or seven hundred dollars of tech time, maybe. Still, the adapter worked flawlessly on all the other drives I then proceeded to hook it up to.

Laptop drives were able to spin up on the USB power alone, but my collection of 5 1/4" drives needed something extra, so I plugged in the power brick and up they came. SATA and IDE both worked effortlessly with the adapter, and equally well on both my Mac and PC, just as advertised.

I like the modularity of the design. instead of a USB plug mated to it for life, the adapter has a USB mini connector on one end, and various adapter ports on others. You can connect the adapter directly to IDE drives, or use the extension cable that comes with it if access is limited. The SATA connector plugs into the end opposite the USB port, allowing you to use the supplied cable or one you've got around. Keeping the cables and the adapter separate is a nice touch, and allows for better storage, less redundancy of cables, and less wires to break over time. The unit also has cool lights to show power USB connectivity, and data transfer.

All in all, Newer Tech's adapter turns out to be every bit as useful as I'd hoped, and its compact size and ability to handle a wide range of drive types mean that it can expect to stay in my toolkit for a long time.