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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Apricorn's DriveWire: A Hard Drive 'Swiss Army Knife'

Jan 27 2008 11:29AM | Permalink |Comments (9) |

A quick Sunday shout-out to Apricorn, whose DriveWire Universal Hard Drive Adapter (model number ADW-USB-KIT) has received frequent use of late by yours truly:

This cool little widget offers three different HDD interfaces:

2.5" PATA (40-pin),
3.5" PATA (44-pin), and
SATA

It translates them into USB2 for external connectivity to a Mac or PC. Not shown in the picture, but also included, are:

a USB cable (duh),
a beefy AC adapter,
Apricorn's EZ Gig II HDD cloning software for Windows,
ShirtPocket Software's SuperDuper cloning software for OS X, and
detailed instructions

I've used both EZ Gig II and SuperDuper in the past with excellent results. I haven't yet run into LBA-induced 128 GByte-max capacity limitations that plagued other USB2 adapters I've used in the past. And you can't beat the price; $29.99 after rebate (through the end of this month) direct from Apricorn, as well as from numerous retailers. Just be careful not to short out any of the exposed hard drive controller circuitry that's normally protected by virtue of the HDD being installed in a system!

A protective (aka non-conductive) piece of paper in-between the PCB and whatever's beneath the HDD works well for me.

Reader Comments

at 1/28/2008 1:18:41 PM, Victor said:
$15.00 rebate at Newegg.com until 1/31/08!

at 1/28/2008 2:02:54 PM, JJPEngr said:
Brian,

Thanks for pointing this device out. Does it work with SCSI drives? I have several SCSI HDD from old Macs that I pulled out before recycling the computer, and there are files I occasionally want to extract. I have the RATOC SCSI to Firewire adapter to use with drives I have in an external enclosure. But I also have a couple that were internal, and the Apricorn device looks like it might connect to them.

at 1/28/2008 4:14:59 PM, Brian Dipert said:
Dear JJPEngr, nope it's PATA/SATA only. Coincidentally, I also own the RATOC adapter!

at 1/30/2008 7:06:28 AM, JJPEngr said:
Brian,
Thanks. There is also an adapter similar to the Apricorn from Newer Technology available from Other World Computing. It is also $29.95.

at 1/30/2008 10:25:33 PM, Just Me said:
This is only one of perhaps 6 different makes of outwardly similar products the local MicroCenter stocks.

It has its plusses and minuses.

On the plus side, it is a pretty color - the others are all BLACK.

But the BIG difference is the PC disk backup software that is bundled with it. Perhaps you could call it "Acronis Lite" or "Acronis Jr". It will let you plug a virgin 160G laptop drive into the USB port of a laptop, and then will take EVERYTHING from the laptop''s perhaps 30G drive and make a full 160G size and fully BOOTABLE new drive all while running XP, W2K or whatever on the laptop. No need to boot some weird DOS package, though you do have to have installed the s/w on your system first. You then rip out the old drive (and label and hide it for emergency recovery), install the new drive and boot your newly liberated laptop.

The included software ALSO suggests you let it create an emergency boot CD for you. Do it. The software can also create a single container file on any disk you have (USB, internal, whatever) of any other complete disk. That is the game - COMPLETE DISK (bootable or whatever), but not just selected folders. Periodically make fresher ones but always have more thah one on hand and dont be overwriting your only old copy when something new and horrible happens.

IF you lose your bootable drive, just pop in a virgin drive, also have a drive with the backup container file you want to use connected and boot the emergency CD you made. It will let you recreate the bootable drive that was packed in that single container file.

If you have just lost a file or folder or 2, the installed package will let you MOUNT any of the container files as a virtual disk using whatever spare drive letter you choose. You can then use ANY application you want to read and copy off whatever files you want - no need to ressurect a physical drive just to grab a few files.

AND as a slightly BAD issue, but one shared with MANY other similar products, if you try to plug the 40 pin ATA (3.5" size) into a DVD drive, you probably block the drive''s molex power jack so you can''t get a power cable into it. A short M-F 40 pin suitable ribbon cable will solve that but I now only use this adapter on SATA DVD drives where it works well - EXCEPT FOR its one BIGGEST liability...

Do read the tiny print on the sticker on the bottom with its connector picture UPSIDE DOWN from reality and realize that they REALLY are warning you about a potential disaster they must know only too well about!

Their power supply cord, unlike the HARD white nylon molex plugs on power supplies, sports a firm but squishy enough plug that you can shove it in UPSIDE DOWN and that swaps +12 and +5VDC supply pins. A brand new Samsung SH-S183L took less than 5 seconds to bitterly complain by actually opening its drawer to let out the acrid cloud of smoke it was gagging on.

So, know it may not work on your parallel DVD drive, and that you MUST watch its powersupply plug''s keying carefully as you plug it in, and enjoy the really excellent backup and recovery software!

I own several brands of similar bench top drive to usb adapters, and this is the only one with software, and I love it!

at 1/31/2008 6:34:46 AM, JJPEngr said:
Although your blog won’t let me include the link, more info on the Newer Technology adapter can be found at www.newertech.com under USB2 adapter.

Looks like it may overcome the blocked power connection you mentioned.

I agree the software with the Apricorn is a plus when installing a new larger HDD.

It is also interesting to see what Apricorn is doing these days. I had a printer connection adapter (Apricord) from them for my old Apple IIc many years ago.

at 5/11/2008 10:37:56 PM, lindy100 said:
Just bought this... it appears you can't just mount the drive to get its files, but *have* to use their software to clone the entire drive. Please confirm if that's your understanding as well.

Thanks,
lindy100

at 5/12/2008 8:08:21 AM, Brian Dipert said:
Dear lindy100, I never bothered installing their software (though from past experience, it works well). I simply plugged in the drive and Windows XP SP2 was able to deal with it just fine

at 8/16/2009 5:01:03 PM, JJ said:
I've had a couple of drives that aren't supported. One had a BIOS based version of Norton Ghost which made the file system proprietary. Once disabled, I was able to access the disk with the drivewire. Look out for that issue.

The other was an old DOS HD. I couldn't get it to work with the drivewire at all. It recognized the disk but displayed it as being 2 TB of unallocated space. What am I missing?

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