Review on StarTech.com USB 3.0 to SATA IDE Adapter: Effortless External Hard Drive Transfer & Conversion by Jon Ford

More 4.5 stars than 5 mainly because there is some confusion between the instructions and the items in the box. I needed a good way to get some (OK, LOTS) of photos and videos off the hard drive of two old computers. Computers are long outdated (one was a Pentium 3.) and would be cumbersome to transport using "conventional" means. With this product you can easily remove the drive and connect it to a super fast modern computer via USB 3.0. And it works. There is a mini-disk with some drivers, but you don't need them. Plug and play adapter, at least in Windows environment. The main thing is to remember the steps you are taking to make it happen. First I plug in the power but don't turn it on (there is a switch on the power cord) then I plug in the IDE adapter. Then I turn on the device, wait for the drive to accelerate to the desired speed, and then plug it into the computer's USB port. The problem is not with the adapter as such, but with the stupid Windows security protocols. The problem is when you can't open the file from disk because you don't own it. To get around this, you need to change ownership via security properties (right-click the folder, select Properties, then the Security tab - it's pretty intuitive from there). Despite this, you may have trouble accessing some files. If I copied them to the host computer's hard drive, I had no problem opening them. It's USB 3.0, so even large files transfer fairly quickly. So I'd say you really need to have this in your toolbox if you have old computers - the technology is such that we're storing more and more things electronically. It's good to have a tool that can easily access this data if the supporting computer goes down for some reason. I like this product more than the dock as it is easier to roll up and store than the dock. A good product