The Most Indispensable Tool in My PC Repair Kit-gctid43350

[Ajamu]

.


The Most Indispensable Tool in My PC Repair Kit

                  By Rick Broida, PCWorld                    May 3, 2011 7:28 AM

The Most Indispendable Tool in My PC Repair Kit | PCWorld


Novice  computer users, this post is not for you. But if you have intermediate  or advanced skills (meaning that you're comfortable poking around a PC's  innards), I'd like to recommend a special tool for your PC  repair/upgrade/troubleshooting toolkit.

It's a USB-to-IDE (older drive connection)/SATA (newer drive connection) adapter, one that allows you to plug any  "naked" hard drive into a USB port. I've owned one of these for a few  years, and while I don't use it often, it has saved the day on numerous  occasions.

         A recent example: My beloved media-center PC was exhibiting the  symptoms of hard-drive failure. I knew I had a short window of time in  which to rescue some recorded TV shows before the drive was no longer  accessible. The PC itself was no longer bootable, but I was able to  connect the adapter to the drive, and the drive to my main desktop.  Never mind that the failing drive was still screwed inside the media  center pc at the time! (Getting it out would have required major surgery.)

         In another instance, I'd replaced the hard drive in a laptop and  needed to retrieve some data from the old one--which was now "naked"  (i.e. outside the PC, without any kind of enclosure). The adapter  effectively turned it into an external USB hard drive, one I could  access with like speed and ease.

I'm not saying you should rush out and buy one of these this  minute, just that you never know when one will come in handy--especially  if you're the tech-support person for friends and family. These  adapters usually sell for $15-30; TigerDirect, for example, has a Sabrent USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA adapter for $19.99. It comes with everything you need and works with all drive sizes (2.5- (laptop hard drives), 3.5- (desktop hard drives), and 5.25-inch (dvd/blu-ray drives)).

==========================================

--- put it in a hard drive enclosure if you wanna carry the drive around to use as an external drive ---


an example Newegg.com - acomdata HDEXXUP-240 2.5" Black USB 2.0 Enclosure Kit

=====================================================

.