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I’ve bought tens of thousands of pounds worth of computer peripherals over the past 15 years, from a 3.5″ floppy for my Acorn to a 4TB RAID5… But I’ve never bought anything as useful as I bought a few months ago: A USB to SATA/IDE connector.

You’ve probably seen one - they’re quite popular on ebay and the like - you can pick one up for about a tenner. I bought mine from Hong Kong - and it was delivered within a few days (I’ve had UK sellers take far longer to deliver!).

I made sure the one I purchased came with the power supply - as it can be quite difficult to isolate a 4 pin molex connector if you’re wanting to hot-plug stuff into your laptop etc. It’s a long slim brick style PSU with 3-pin kettle connection.

The IDE end of the connector contains three connections: a 3.5″ IDE, a 2.5″ IDE (for laptop HD’s) and an SATA. One thing to note on the one I bought was the IDE connectors had the middle pin blanked out - however one or two of the HD’s I’ve connected it to have actually had the pin present… One to watch out for!

Connecting the HD is a breeze - just plug it in -connect the power and turn it on at the switch. Once you’ve done this your PC recognises it like a normal removable drive (eg. USB Stick) and you can move files etc. as per normal.

All-in-all a piece of kit well worth 10 quid - but that will save you having to turn your computer on-and-off everytime you need to rescue some files off a friend or family members HD.

One thing to keep in mind when using a device like this: Sometimes if you’re using a non-powered USB hub it can’t provide enough power to power-up a 2.5″ HD (doesn’t matter for 3.5″ and SATA but 2.5″ power comes through the IDE cable).

Rating: 5 *.

Amazon have them for £35 ish here - they tend to be about £10 ish on ebay.