Having problems with a hard drive? Perhaps XP or Vista won't boot? And, of course, all of your important files are on that drive! Normally, to resuscitate a non booting drive, it takes a reformat and reinstall - but, if you don't have any backups, you'll lose all those important files.

NewerTechnology Inc. has a work around for those problems, a unique way to get to those data files before performing a destructive format, a device called the Universal Drive Adapter!
The Universal Drive Adapter is a nifty little gadget that allows you to bridge an IDE or SATA drive over to a USB 2.0 port. Simply plug the hard drive into the unit and the unit's power supply, then connect a USB cable from a PC and viola, you have access to the partitions on the drive!

Once connected, you can quickly browse the directory structure on your troublesome hard drive and copy what you need, before attempting to fix any problems on the drive. Once you have your data files, you can perform diagnostics or run repair utilities on the drive, while it is still connected to the temporary host computer.

Performance of the unit is good! I was playing around with the Universal Drive Adapter and a Maxtor Sata 150 drive and I was able to copy 10Gbytes of data in about 8 minutes when using a USB 2.0 port. More than fast enough to prove to be a useful tool for rescuing data!

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The unit can work with Sata and IDE drives and can even be used to turn an old drive into an external storage device or connect an optical drive to a computer with an available USB port. At just 25 bucks, the Universal Drive Adapter is a must have tool for anyone working with PCs or Macs!