Vantec SATA/IDE to USB Adapter

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Working on PC's is fun, all except data recovery. It's a pain tearing your PC apart to simply stick another drive inside. Today we look at a smooth little gadget that takes away that pain.

You can read the review here and discuss it here!
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Hi Rob,

Great review, I actually just ordered one of these, my wife called me (I'm out of town) and told me that the computer broke. From the symptoms she described it sounds like the motherboard was shot. My first aim is to backup all data on the HDD.

My question to you is, if my hard drive in the computer was fdisk'ed into four drive letters, if I hook it up via USB to my work laptop, will the four drive letters mount OK?

- Bill Cahill
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
This was actually Matts review, but I don't see that being a problem. I've partitioned my 2.5" drive before and the computer picked up on all of them when connected via USB.

So no, I doubt it will be a problem. Please let us know when you give it a try though. If for some reason it doesn't, which I really can't see, then you may need a different type of converter (Like an PCMCIA S-ATA Card).
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Thanks, I'll let you know!

Worked perfect, first time! Was able to save data to my work laptop.

Bad mobo turned out to be a cooling fan that failed while I was out of town... chipset melted down. Abit users beware, they make great mobos but I replaced this fan and heatsink twice. Keep an eye on your fans!

Ordered a refurb Socket 478 mobo to replace. Hard to find these anymore! Will be making a new PC in the next year but I want to keep the old one around, it's been a good one.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
Glad to hear that you got your data saved. The Vantec USB to SATA/IDE converter has become a trusted and necessary piece of test equipment in my arsenal. I think it'll do the same in yours.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Just purchased to check my son's laptop drive. Was able to use the maintenance program on the recovery cd to resolve the problem after some trouble shooting.
My Question. Can I use this device to copy the old drive (which is only 30 gig) to a larger 80 gig drive and get all the xp os on the new drive.

Thanks,

Travis
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
That might be a little trickier... You -can- just try copying everything over as normal, but you will likely need to use the WinXP CD and hit up the command prompt to "fixmbr" or "fixboot". I doubt that copying the files over would make the drive bootable.

If anyone else has any ideas, jump in!
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
Use Norton Ghost or another drive image copying program and it'll work like a champ. Just make certain to use the USB drivers option with Ghost if that's the program that you settle on.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
I just had windows crash on me, it boots up to the windows logo and crashes samething with safemode and i want to pull data off the drive will this product work for that?
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
how do I use it??

I just purchased a converter and was wondering how to use it. That users manual that came with it was worthless. When I plug in the hard drive to the adapter and then USB into the computer, the light comes on and I can feel the hard drive moving. Then the computer recognized the device. How can I access the files on the hard drive once it's connected. I'm no computer guru, so any help is appreciated.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
Open my computer and you'll see another hard drive there. Just click on it and it'll open in Explorer and you can browse to whatever files/folders you need.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
I had the same problem.... everything is plugged in and working great but I do not have the hard drive in My Computer, even after refresh. Swapped the hard drive and same problem. Tried on another system... same problem. I know these hard drives are partitioned well... use IDE to access them all the time.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
Then your converter could be bad or the drive might be set to CS and not master. If the hard drive isn't set to master it will not access the drive.
 

RoninV

Obliviot
Accessing Documents & Settings folder...?

We had a notebook that would not boot, so we popped the HD, hooked it up to the Vantec adapter, and were able to view, move, and delete folders/files from it as if it was just an external drive. Nice!! But here's the rub....

When the notebook was working, the user would boot up and sign into WinXP using a username/password combination. These 'profiles' appear in the Documents & Settings folder on the HD. How do we access the password protected profile? The folder appears, but access to it is denied. We have the user's password, but aren't sure where to input it so as to access the folders under that profile.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
You can't. The only way to access those folders would be to get an identical notebook and set it to boot off of a USB device, hook that drive to it and boot onto that drive in those user profiles and either disable the passwords or move the files into non-password protected folders.
 

RoninV

Obliviot
Shared drive w/ password?

Thanks for responding. I was hoping my thoughts on the issue were incorrect, but apparently not. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the Vantec adapter? Most of the time, these bad babies are used to move/copy data from a failing drive, as far as notebook computers are concerned. Based on your response, a user could simply install their HD in another nootbook, boot it, and copy the files to an attached external drive. If you boot a notebook, with the failing HD attached (using the vantec), would it not become part of the boot sequence and appear as just another drive on the system, requiring a password for access (like a shared drive)?
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
No, it doesn't defeat the purpose of the dongle. That's just the nastiness of password protecting your files and I assumed that it was the notebook that had failed and not the drive which is common. Ya know the scenario, clumsy user drops the notebook, the mobo takes a dump because of it but the drive's intact.

As to the use of the dongle, I use it to access drives outside of my computer period. Failing drives or good drives just because I don't feel like cracking my PC open and wiring it in. I mean if one of my drives was failing I'd be more apt to toss the drive I want to send the data to onto the dongle and transfer the data to it from within Window$ because I keep my files password protected.
 
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