DriveWire IDE/SATA-150 / Hi-Speed USB Storage Controller bundled with"Upgrade Suite"

The day I got this I used it on 2 Sata drives, 1 Pata 2.5" and a Pata 3.5" drive. Heretofore I had not been able to do anything with them, but they all read with no problems.Running Windows XP, I didn't need to install any software or drivers (the included CD has a hard drive cloning tool on it). I did, however, have to run the "found new hardware" wizard for each drive I plugged in - It never looked online for a driver, it just created support for that drive. So, aside from having to tell Windows that it's okay to install a few times, it's basically plug and play... except for one more little thing. If you are interested in buying this (and I recommend you do) you should Google how to transfer ownership of a hard drive, otherwise you are going to run in to a couple of "Access Denied" error messages.If you are trying to read a hard drive from another Windows PC you will need to do this in order to access files created and used by that PC's user accounts. It's not difficult for someone who knows a little bit about computers (it involves booting in safe mode), but for a novice who just wants to recovery files from a dead computer, this is one little thing that might make it a tad tough. Also, you must make sure that you know how to set a hard drive's jumper to "Master". This is usually diagrammed on the drive itself.But none of that has anything to do with the quality of the DriveWire device. It's just the nature of PC hard drives. This product is well made with a metal body, has a compact design even with a fairly large power-brick, and is just plain handy for any computer geek to have. I'm sure there are others that work just as well if not better than this one, but it's inexpensive and nearly flawless.---EDIT---6/20/11Since I've owned this device I have used it to access and backup a friend's data from a dead computer (That I later resurrected) and help some other friends regain data that they thought was lost for years.Today I had a mini panic-attack when my work laptop, and most important computer I own, would not boot. I diagnosed the problem as having something to do with the Bios battery, RAM, or (most worryingly) the hard drive. Well, thanks to this little devil, I have not only confirmed that the Hard Drive still works but am now grabbing all of my important files off of it. THIS is why you should ALWAYS backup data, which I hadn't done in a few months, and THIS is why you need to buy the Apricorn DriveWire HDD adapter.

I got the idea of buying a bare-bones universal device adapter from talking to Tech Support for my HP EX487 MediaCenter Server. I had harddrive problems somewhere in the server and would have to backup the harddrives in the server, individually, to other storage and then perform a factory reset install on the server. I hadn't even realized that universal device adapters were on the market, much less that they could be a cheap alternative to buying a SATA drive enclosure.I checked around and felt that the Apricorn universal adapter seemed to be better engineered than the Chinese/Hong Kong products that I checked out. You can spend much less than I did for the Apricorn adapter on any of these other products (and, yes, you can spend even more on other junky products too) but my assessment of the Apricorn adapter was confirmed when I started to use it.I used the adapter to back up all 4 2TB SATA drives - formatted for Windows Home Server - to my old server. I ran CHKDSK /R (repair) on 1 drive when checksum errors stopped my progress. Still using the adapter, I performed new partitioning of each drive and ran low-level formatting on everything. It turned out the drive with errors could not take a low-level format (originally the server installed the drive with a quick format). I have now eliminated the bad drive from the server.Since I now have the Apricorn universal adapter, I experimented with using it on some old IDE drives I have. It worked fine. In fact, over the years I've held onto an old Dell 600XL desktop (10 years old) because it somehow was able to read DVDs that my more "modern" DVD drives would reject. I uninstalled the Dell DVD drive from its tower and experimented with using the bare DVD drive via the Apricorn universal adapter on my current platform, a laptop computer. Everything works fine. Therefore, I can finally retire the aged Dell 600XL desktop and keep its DVD drive for those few occasions when I need it (via the adapter) on my current computer, a bonus.I'm very pleased with the Apricorn universal adapter overall. It comes with a CD with utilities which didn't really add any value to to my current project, but the programs seemed competent.BTW: My purchase came with a $10.00 Amazon/Apricorn coupon offer, too. Everything helps.One minor nit: When the Apricorn universal adapter is plugged into a SATA or IDE drive (I don't have any PATA drives to comment on that) the base of the Apricorn adapter does not mount flush with the base of the harddrive case, potentially causing the plug connection to wobble and causing a connection error. I was able to solve this problem by assembling a pile of a few paper brochures and some card stock underneath the harddrive to create a better "mounting platform" that lined up with the adapter connector. Everything worked fine then.I would definitely recommend the Apricorn Drivewire Universal HDD Adapter to others.

I orderd this product along with a Western Digital hard drive to upgrade from a 200GB to a 500GB on my Toshiba A215 S-4747 laptop. While waiting for the Apricorn Adapter I began researching about cloning hard drives. I found on the Internet Easeus Todo Home Backup software and installed it on my computer. When the equipment arrived found cloning software along with all the necessary cables to connect my new hard drive to my laptop. I immediately connected the Apricorn to my computer and plugged in the new hard drive. I did clone my first hard drive using the Easeus cloning software. It took about 2.5 hours to complete. Upon completion I shut down my laptop, removed the battery and gained access to my 200GB hard drive. I removed it and installed the cloned 500GB hard drive. Powered up my laptop and it took probably 3 minutes longer than normal to boot up. After the boot up was completed and the Vista desktop was displayed I proceded to check to see if all programs were working. Everything worked just like my 200GB hard drive. I was extremely happy because this saves a couple of days of all the hassel of a clean install and the updates that go along with it. Now this gave me a spare 200GB hard drive that could be installed at any time in my computer as a backup hard drive.I have since used the software that came with the Apricorn adapter. I was reluctant to use the Apricon software because of reviews that I had read on the internet about how difficult it was to use. I did not find that true and in fact it is very easy to use, almost a not brainer. This is a GREAT PRODUCT and every computer user should have one nearby to use. It is not just for cloning it can also be used to retrieve files from good working hard drives that have been removed from failed computers.No computer user should be with out one!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This product includes hardware and software which is effective and intuitive in operation.It is portable and versatile and supports three different types of storage devices. If youare upgrading your system drive to a new SSD this is the most cost effective and efficienttool to acquire. You can run the cloning software from the CD without even having to rebootand the copy is a sector by sector method which will allow excluding some files if necessaryto reduce the size of the transfer.

It didn't do what I thought it would do. I think I misunderstood that this would not work on an older machine.

Working great.

works really great with adapters for ATA and SATA. Easy to use

Great tool to transfer data from old to new disk. Versatile and powerful!