ADS Technologies DLX185 Dual Link Drive Kit

by ADS Tech

Product Details

Product Manual [665kb PDF]

• Item Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008NV1A
• Item model number: DLX-185
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 22, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

ADS Technologies DLX185 is loaded with features and capabilites. The Dual Link Drive adds multi-gig storage to your PC or MAC. It instantly enhance almost any IDE hard drive, such as ATA-100, ATA-133, or ATA-6 drives. It converts your DVD or CD Drive to FireWire or USB 2.0, supports drives up to 250 GB, and converts your internal hard drive to USB 2.0 or FireWire. The DLX185 is a super fast and reliable external storage, plus it makes your DVD-recordable drive portable. The DLX185 comes with Intech's Speedtools Utilities for MAC OS 9.X and OS X. Just plug in the drive and it mounts automatically. Thus, adding a drive is fast and easy!

The drive is hot swappable with real plug and play for your External Drives. Includes pop-out front bezel to cover a hard drive or it's removable for CD Drive installation. Supports sustained data transfer rates up to 35 MB/Sec, with a power supplies for both 5 volt and 12 volts to your drive. The silent ball bearing fan keeps your drive cool and running smooth. The micro-slot security protection keeps your drive from walking away and it is compatible with Anchor Pad and Kensington Micro-Slot Locks. Lastly, the DLX185 has a lighted rear power toggle switch and a hard drive activity light.

Product Description

Here's a simple way to add multi-gigabyte storage to your PC or Mac, by converting almost any IDE hard drive ( ATA-100, ATA-133 or ATA-6) to a hot-swappable external USB 2.0 or FireWire drive. Supplies both 5 Volt and 12 Volts to your drive as needed Silent ball bearing fan keeps your drive running cool and smooth Micro-slot security protection - keep your drive from walking away with optional Kensington Security device Lighted rear power toggle switch Hard drive activity light Stackable & daisy-chainable Provides two 400 Mbits/sec PYRO 1394 / FireWire ports & one 480 Mbits/sec USB 2.0 port OS Compatibility - Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 XP or OS 9

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great support, solid product, September 23, 2004

By 

Matthew Dittrich (Orange County, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ADS Technologies DLX185 Dual Link Drive Kit (Personal Computers)

I bought this enclosure to house my 250 GB Hitachi HDD. The case is easy enough to assemble and disassemble, and performance meets my expectations. I like the fact that it has a seemingly robust power supply, with a fan to prevent components from frying themselves. I think it will probably last longer than my drive. Despite the fan, it runs reasonably quietly.

But what really made this product stand out in my mind was the support that I got from ADS. When I initially tried to install my drive in the enclosure, I was dismayed to find that the supplied IDE ribbon cable wasn't quite long enough to reach, if I wanted to secure the drive with the supplied screws. I submitted a help request (asking for a longer cable) through ADS's website, and received an email reply later that day. They gave me a phone number to call, and said that getting a replacement cable should be no problem. Sure enough, I called, and the ADS rep sent another (slightly longer) cable out to me right away, free of charge. The new cable was long enough, and now I'm happy. :)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy add-on, April 12, 2004

By 

chuck-in-az "chuck-in-az" (Tempe, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ADS Technologies DLX185 Dual Link Drive Kit (Personal Computers)

Nice product - appears well constructed. I had no problems installing a 160gig Maxtor and getting it up and running real quickly.

Only problem was the outer covering material "slides" open to reveal the chassis - as it is supposed to. "Slides" - yes, but not easily! You've really got to tug pretty hard because of the close fit.

Also, note that in XP there is apparently a small bug in which it will not always recognize a removable drive in Explorer. Apprently will be fixed this summer in a maintenance release. You can go into computer management | Disk Management to see the new, removable drive and then Change the drive letter.

I was always able to see the drive in a CMD (DOS) box, too.

I just ordered a second unit of this Dual-Link

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No Problem with Burner; Connection issue w/HDD, December 31, 2004

By 

F. A. Parks (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ADS Technologies DLX185 Dual Link Drive Kit (Personal Computers)

This thing is built like a tank (very solid) and runs very quietly. I initially bought it to house a DVD burner; installation of the drive into the case was quick and easy, as was installing the software on my Win98SE system. Absolutely no functional problems using either the USB link with that computer or the Firewire with an HP laptop running XP.
However, when I later wanted to install a Seagate HDD in place of the DVD, I found that the IDE cable was too short to plug into that drive if mounted to the bottom rails as instructed by the manual. Also, the manual had a confusing instruction to lay the drive "on top of" a supplied black cable. This made no sense to me. I emailed support and got a response from someone who didn't seem too bright or informed. He said that I can use the ribbon cable that is in my computer. I assume he means that I can obtain a standard IDE cable to use, but the length of such a cable could not possibly fit into the case. Even though I had asked for a correctly sized cable he didn't offer to send one. He also wrote that the black cable referred to is the LED cable, but didn't explain the goofy laying-on-top instruction.
Anyway, the HDD is now installed and working by mounting all the way to one side of the case, using only two screws. Not acceptable for anything other than temporary use, which this is. Be aware of this issue before you buy.

Update: I called and they are sending a longer cable at no charge. I'm told that a number of these were shipped from the factory with a short cable.