Customer Reviews

Apricorn Drivewire Universal HDD Adapter USB To 2.5IN & 3.5IN Sata & Pata

5 star:		(135)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

This is very cool. I frequently need access to hard drives that for whatever reason need to be removed from a computer. Usually, the computer has died and data needs to be retrieved from the hard drive.

This universal DriveWire allows nearly any hard drive to be plugged into a USB port.

Features:
- It's Small - it'll easily fit in a briefcase or toolbox.
- It has a power supply to power-up the hard drive.
- No software required - it's as easy to use as a flash drive or thumb drive. It comes with a CD but I didn't really need it.
- Flexible - can support almost any drive: 2.5" laptop drives, IDE drives or SATA drives.

This little device is elegantly general in its possibilities. Indeed, it has more possibilities than those described in its manual.

The "EZ Gig II Backup & Disaster Recovery Software" that comes bundled with it is very powerful, and I say more about that in the next paragraph. Even without using that program, the hardware itself enables one to peer from any USB-equipped computer into the directories and files of a disk drive that is mounted on the adapter. Just as one can browse through file-containing directories (folders) on a USB flash drive, one can do the same with the contents of an intact disk drive attached to this adapter. When my daughter's laptop quit working for reasons unrelated to its disk drive, I removed the laptop's disk drive (a simple process requiring only a Size #0 Phillips screwdriver), connected the disk drive to the Apricorn DriveWire, plugged the DriveWire's USB cable into my desktop computer, and easily retrieved the document files that she needed.

Now to the "EZ Gig II Backup & Disaster Recovery Software." The happy ending to this story is that a potentially disastrous loss turned into no loss whatsoever and a painless disk-drive upgrade from 100GB to 160GB. Here's the problem I faced. Knowing that the shop which was going to perform an extended-warranty repair was likely to wipe the laptop's hard drive of its contents and reinstall Windows, I wanted to preserve all of the installed software and Windows customization to which my daughter was accustomed. To accomplish this, I needed to clone the laptop's disk drive and keep the clone when sending the laptop in for repair. If the laptop had still been working, this would have been easy to do with the EZ Gig II software: install the software on the laptop, attach a new drive to the Apricorn DriveWire, plug the DriveWire's USB cable into the laptop, and run the program. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that because the laptop was dead. Here's how I solved the problem. I bought two Apricorn DriveWires--one for me and one for my daughter. I installed my copy of the EZ Gig II software on my desktop computer. I mounted the laptop's original, 100GB disk drive on one DriveWire adapter, and I mounted a new, 160GB disk drive on the other DriveWire adapter. Plugging both USB cables into the desktop computer and running EZ Gig II, I was able to clone the contents of the 100GB original onto the 160GB replacement.

When the repair shop fixed the laptop, it did as I had feared: It wiped the laptop's hard drive of its contents and reinstalled Windows. No problem. My daughter replaced the Windows-only 100GB disk drive with the 160GB clone, and she was completely back in business. The only change was a 60GB increase in storage capacity!

In reading the review where the drives appeared to have been 'killed' by this product, I was thinking of how opposite my experiences have been with this product.

I have used the adapter and the 'EZ-Gig' software to upgrade my Dell laptop 2.5" drive. I have used the same arrangement for three 3.5" desktop drives. The Dell and one of the 3.5" drives is a SATA. The other two 3.5" drives were not.
In all of the above cases, the issue and goal was to increase the space available without performing a 'clean install' of Windows--and the requisite re-install of all of the programs/settings--etc.

In another case, I used the adapter to read a very old 10 gig drive and retrieve information.

As noted in the other review, the USB connection to the adapter and my PCs (the Dell laptop (E1705) and desktop (no 'brand' per se [PC800-E Deluxe montherboard] has worked very well indeed.


There was no trouble using the adapter and the accompanying 'EZ-Gig' software.
Though I dare not recount the steps taken for the upgraded(I should have documented them), the process for all of the upgrades was quite easy and saved a great deal of time.
I do agree that 'anything is possible'---I also, do agree that that type of answer is not conducive to good customer relations.

The five 'stars' are for the operation of the product only--Not an endorsement of the answer you got from Apricorn.

I hope that others will share their experiences with the product. That will give a better view of what is happening [good and bad] in the 'field.'

I work as a network specialist and was looking for a small device that I could carry with me to my remote locations. I have a total of 32 remote offices, with some of them 2 1/2 hours away. I have owned one of these for about two years now and looking at buying another one for my side business. I main thing I use this for cloning disks and hooking up infected hard drives that have a hard time booting up. I probably have used it in every other way also without problems. I have backed up failing hard drives, used it to pull off users documents of a failing hard drive, moving to a larger hard drive. I have even used it with mac.

I wish I would have bought one of these years ago! I find myself using this thing more than I use Norton Ghost. I setup one workstation the way I want it and pull the drive out and go down the line imaging the rest of the computers.

I just looked at some of the negative reviews, and have not experienced any of these problems (frying hard drives). You do have to be careful when you are hooking up the power and these are stated in the user manual. I have had a few hard drives not show up using the included CD, but this seems to be fixed when I recheck my connections.

I don't like how the thing is made of cheap plastic, they could have made it a little bit more durable. I also noticed that sometimes the connector can be cock-eyed. I usually put a book of sticky pads under it so it's level when its connected to the hard drive (this has been the cause of some of the connection issues).

A versatile hardware interface allows you to work on most serial or parallel ATA drives without cracking open your workstation. Drives will run natively in Windows Operating Systems - no drivers needed. USB 2.0 interface so it is not very fast - hope Apricorn makes a USB 3.0 version soon. Has it's own power supply so you won't over tax the USB.

The big surprise was the encluded duplication software: professional quality, stand-alone (your operating system doesn't need to be working - boot directly to the CD), and very intuitive. If you have enough skill (and courage) to replace your own hard drives, you will have no trouble cloning them with this package. I cloned my wifes laptop disk to a smaller Solid State Drive in just a few minutes. It scaled the partitions down automatically, copied the contents, slapped a Master Boot Record on, and done. Simple, minimal interaction, no superfluous fluff.

I got the idea of buying a bare-bones universal device adapter from talking to Tech Support for my HP EX487 MediaCenter Server. I had harddrive problems somewhere in the server and would have to backup the harddrives in the server, individually, to other storage and then perform a factory reset install on the server. I hadn't even realized that universal device adapters were on the market, much less that they could be a cheap alternative to buying a SATA drive enclosure.

I checked around and felt that the Apricorn universal adapter seemed to be better engineered than the Chinese/Hong Kong products that I checked out. You can spend much less than I did for the Apricorn adapter on any of these other products (and, yes, you can spend even more on other junky products too) but my assessment of the Apricorn adapter was confirmed when I started to use it.

I used the adapter to back up all 4 2TB SATA drives - formatted for Windows Home Server - to my old server. I ran CHKDSK /R (repair) on 1 drive when checksum errors stopped my progress. Still using the adapter, I performed new partitioning of each drive and ran low-level formatting on everything. It turned out the drive with errors could not take a low-level format (originally the server installed the drive with a quick format). I have now eliminated the bad drive from the server.

Since I now have the Apricorn universal adapter, I experimented with using it on some old IDE drives I have. It worked fine. In fact, over the years I've held onto an old Dell 600XL desktop (10 years old) because it somehow was able to read DVDs that my more "modern" DVD drives would reject. I uninstalled the Dell DVD drive from its tower and experimented with using the bare DVD drive via the Apricorn universal adapter on my current platform, a laptop computer. Everything works fine. Therefore, I can finally retire the aged Dell 600XL desktop and keep its DVD drive for those few occasions when I need it (via the adapter) on my current computer, a bonus.

I'm very pleased with the Apricorn universal adapter overall. It comes with a CD with utilities which didn't really add any value to to my current project, but the programs seemed competent.

BTW: My purchase came with a $10.00 Amazon/Apricorn coupon offer, too. Everything helps.

One minor nit: When the Apricorn universal adapter is plugged into a SATA or IDE drive (I don't have any PATA drives to comment on that) the base of the Apricorn adapter does not mount flush with the base of the harddrive case, potentially causing the plug connection to wobble and causing a connection error. I was able to solve this problem by assembling a pile of a few paper brochures and some card stock underneath the harddrive to create a better "mounting platform" that lined up with the adapter connector. Everything worked fine then.

I would definitely recommend the Apricorn Drivewire Universal HDD Adapter to others.

The last universal HDD adapter I tried, a Sabrent, failed miserably. I liked the look of the Apricorn, so I decided to give it a try. And it worked! I was able to salvage a friend's hard drive from his old, dead iBook, as well as another friend's hard drive from a busted Dell. My only complaint is that, when connected, the adapter and hard drive won't lie flat on a surface together. There's a slight difference in height. Minor complaint. I haven't tried the cloning feature either, but kudos to Apricorn for offering BOTH Mac and PC software.

While easy to install, and generally functioning, the device I got does not satisfy my needs, since the transfers are error prone. At least for 3.5" IDE/PATA drives.

If I try to transfer 500GB from a drive, I'll get roughly 100 errors.
To be clear, there is no error notified during the transfer, so everything looks OK at first glance.

But if I run a diff between the source and the target, roughly 100 files will differ.
If I run a second diff, a different set of 100 will differ.
The overlap between the 2 sets is approximately the ones that got mangled during the copy, the others those that were misread during the diff.

Ran the test with 4 different IDE/PATA 3.5" drives.
If I connect the drives through another device (enclosure), then the transfers are OK, So neither the drives nor the PC are to blame.

For 2.5" IDE/PATA and SATA drives, I have other easy means of access. So I did not feel compelled to do pro-bono testing work.
For 3.5" IDE/PATA, I was looking for something easier to setup than the enclosure, and more durable than ribbon cables, but this device is not it.

I ordered this item and a 360GB laptop drive to upgrade my laptop's 100GB drive. Here were the steps I followed to super easy installation:

1) Hook up new drive to adapter and plug adapter in to USB
2) Put CD in computer drive
3) Reboot computer, ensuring that CD has boot priority over HD
4) Select clone drive, set source and destination drives
5) Wait 45 minutes
6) Disconnect everything, remove laptop cover, unscrew and remove old drive
7) Remove old drive from carriage and attach carriage to new drive
8) Install new drive and replace laptop cover
9) Boot and enjoy :)

I did have a hiccup as I attempted to use a free drive cloning software before I used the CD that came with the adapter. The software I used took 9 hours to clone the old drive to the new drive (!?) and then it didn't boot ("No operating system found").

Once I booted off the included CD it was quick and painless.

One thing to note: in the pictures it looks like the adapter is a nice anodized aluminum. Don't fool yourself. This sucker is plastic. But it works great.

The adapter and the accompanying 'EZ-Gig' software,worked better than advertized. The HDD in my laptop crashed,so I cloned the HDD in my desktop. Took less than 2 hours,following enclosed instructions, for 105 gig. Installed new 120 gig HDD into laptop,updated the drivers and now my laptop is an exact clone of desk top. Simple and easy instructions to follow. The only problem you may encounter is if you can't clone the HDD you are replacing, in that case you may have some driver issues to work with