If you are a geek, chances are that you have a gear bag or a gear closet / cabinet. If your geekiness is truly l33t, you may even have both. Yes, I am proud to say that I do have both! I carry a nice assortment of gear ’stuff’ with me in my gear bag everyday, but I also have some indispensable tools that I keep at home. One of these tools has been the second version of Brando’s USB to IDE cable. These cables have proven to be very handy for computer upgrades and also for family members and friends that have encountered hard drive problems. Often, I’ll give away sample products to friends after my review is complete. Not so for these particular items. I kept the original cable until the 2nd version came out, and now that the 3rd version is here, I know I’ll be keeping it around until there is a 4th.
Package Contents
USB to SATA / IDE cable
SATA Cable
SATA Power cord
AC Power Adapter (100-240v, 50-60Hz)
AC Power cable (UK, Asia and US style cables included)
Driver CD
User’s Manual
The new USB 2.0 to SATA / IDE cable really kicks things up a notch this time around by adding support for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment or SATA hard drives. Not to worry, the cable still works with 3.5 and 2.5 inch IDE hard drives too. And although I’ll only be testing this cable with hard drives, it can also be used with CD-ROM and DVD drives.
The main cable looks almost identical to the 2nd version of this product, except that an SATA connector has been added to the top surface.
The included SATA cable snaps into the keyed port easily and securely.
At this point you might be thinking that since this cable has 3 different connection points, that it might be possible to plug in 3 different devices at the same time. Ah, great minds think alike! But alas, 3 at once is not possible. Believe me, I tried. Two at once though, will work as long as it is an IDE and an SATA device. Two IDE devices at one time will not work. Sorry.
The test candidates for this review are shown above. I’ll be testing with a 3.5 inch Western Digital Caviar 80gb IDE drive, a 2.5 inch Toshiba 40gb IDE drive and a 3.5 inch Hitachi Deskstar 80gb SATA drive. Let the games begin!
Hooking up a single drive is a simple operation. Connect the SATA or IDE cable to the matching connector on the drive, plug in the power plug into the drive’s power port (if one exists), and then plug in the USB cable. That’s it. Once all connections are made, the drive should spin up, and then automatically mount as a removable drive on your PC or Mac computer (all my testing was conducted on a 20″ iMac G5).
My first test consisted of the Hitachi SATA drive and 2.5 in Toshiba IDE drive. The little Toshiba does not require power, so setup was a snap. Both drives spun up and appeared on my desktop.
The cool part about being able to connect 2 drives at once, is the fact that you can copy / move files between them.
My second test involved the Hitachi SATA drive and Western Digital Caviar IDE drive. Connecting the interface cable was not a problem, it was only when I went to connect power to both of them, that I realized that I only had one power connector and two devices needing power. A quick trip to Radio Shack and $5 resulted in a Y-adapter power cable. With this cable, I was able to connect power to both hard drives, without needing 2 AC adapters. Nice!
I had no problems copying files, moving files, running programs, watching videos or listening to audio files using this cable and the test drives. Yeah, I know, you want to see test data. The test file that I used for all of the transfer tests was a 118.3mb .WMV video of the Napoleon Dynamite movie.
File copy from Mac to Hitachi SATA 11.12 seconds
File copy from Mac to 2.5 Toshiba IDE 33.68 seconds
File copy from Mac to 3.5 Western Digital IDE 11.06 seconds
File copy from Hitachi SATA to Mac 10.22 seconds
File copy from Hitachi SATA to 2.5 Toshiba IDE 45.58 seconds
File copy from Hitachi SATA to 3.5 Western Digital IDE 20.91 seconds
File copy from 3.5 Western Digital IDE to Hitachi SATA 20.75 seconds
File copy from 3.5 Western Digital IDE to Mac 11.07 seconds
File copy from 2.5 Toshiba IDE to Mac 11.72 seconds
File copy from 2.5 Toshiba IDE to Hitachi SATA 22.25 seconds
This cable is easy to use, works great and is valuable tool for techie’s and geeks. It’s one of those items that doesn’t get a lot of use, but as soon as you need one, you’re thankful that you do.
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Product Information
| Price: | 35.0 |
| Manufacturer: | Brando USB |
| Requirements: |
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| Pros: |
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| Cons: |
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Post your comments on the Brando USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Cable review.
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/brando_usb_2_0_to_sata_ide_cable
Just click the POST REPLY button on this page.
Damn, I *need* one of these… it would replace about 20 adaspters, cables and bits of duct tape.
If you could use 2 x IDE drives (can you use 2 x SATA drives, or a SATA and IDE at the same time ??) it would be almost perfect.
BTW, you must be *evil* - your desk is way too clean for a techy person…:-)
moldor:
This cable allows for the following scenarios:
1. 2.5 IDE Drive
2. 3.5 IDE Drive
3. SATA Drive and 2.5 IDE Drive
4. SATA Drive and 3.5 IDE Drive
As for me being evil, rest assured, that you’re only seeing a very small section of my desk
I think overall this is a very good product.
TekGems has it for $26.99
http://tekgems.com/Products/kl-usb-sata-ide-25-35.htm
Julie, what did you think of it using it with a IDE 3.5-in hard drive? Doesn’t the USB cord get in the way of the 4-pin molex? Its not a big deal, I just bent the cord down slightly to expose the power connector.
sun818:
I didn’t have a problem when using a 3.5 inch IDE drive. But now that I have the latest version of this product, it’s even easier to use:
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/usb_2_0_to_sata_ide_adapter_with_one_touch_backup
Julie
i bought usb 2.0 to sata/ide cable and i installed it and i have a proplem
i cant find my hdd
the windows cant find it
my hdd is wd 250gb sata
plz help
seems great with 2.5″ or sata drives but i can not get it work with any of the 3.5″ ide drives i have???? so unless there is a driver somewhere for this and xp its useless for normal ide drives.
hman:
I tested this adapter with a 3.5 in drive and had no issues. It does not require any drivers for XP. It’s all plug and play. Are you certain tha the 3.5 in drive works? Have you tried switching between master and slave mode?
Att.,
Please for inside CD(driver), special for WIN98,who have,
via email, or full URL where to download, for
USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Brando cable adapter.
Product Code: UCABL000100,
bacause thay are not in package contents!
Thanks in advance.
Best regards.
Ilija Lekic
http://usb.brando.com.hk (producer)
did u manage to get it workin on Mac OS X 10.5?
if so, can u please tell me how?
thanks
h:
I no longer have this cable, so I can’t try it under OS X 10.5. Sorry… I do know that Brando’s newer products work fine under 10.5. You can find links to similar reviews that I’ve done above, in the right sidebar.
how do you power down your hard drive?
I bought this one and found that Hard Drive Inspector doesn’t display HDD connected through this cable!!! weird……
Can anyone list softwares like Hard Drive Inspector to test HDDs connected through this cable?
have any one try this in vista / win 7… does the driver work under vista and win 7
When i connect the cable usb2.0 to SATA, it shows USB Device not recognised (Generic USB Hub, Unknown device), If you please help me on this, iam using window xp service pack2.
Need drivers for Winxp Service Pack2
i need the drivers for windows vista!
please if somebody have the driver, send it to my mail!
astaroth_KR@hotmail.com
hello
received the product yesterday 18mar09
tested it on Vista
worked fine once, was able to view drive, scan for viruses, view files, then after disconnecting and reconnecting, drive does not show up in file explorer.
tried with 2 different drives, same problem.
is this a pbm with Vista ?
is it necessary to have specific Vista driver ?
if so, where can it be downloaded from ?
searched Brando website, found no driver download.
help greatly appreciated, thank you
hello again
after my previous post I tested again and found out that
the 40 pin connector can easily be misconnected excluding 2 outmost pins of the hard drive; of course in this case, connection will not work.
I tested and re tested again many times with Vista and XP SP2, and when connector is correctly inserted, everything works absolutely fine, no need for any special drivers.
Hope that helps
Francois
I Need drivers for Winxp Service Pack3 please!!!!
barhanin@gmail.com
I just purchased the product and can’t get it work on any OS. forgot to check and now found that the driver cd not there. can someone pls. email me the driver?
i need the drivers for windows vista too!
please if somebody have the driver, send it to my mail!
tomlison@hotmail.com
Thank you very much!
I need the driver for Mac OS. Disc didn’t come w/ package. Says the filename is:
USB SATA/IDE_05E3_0702.sit
I lost the CD that came with the cable and also need the driver for this. If someone can advise where to get it, I would appreciate it. Thanks.