Pros: worked great for 13 months. Easy to connect and disconnect.

Cons: Failed 1 month after warranty. went dead just this month. I thought maybe the docking station was bad but all the sata drives work in it. I cleaned the contacts and check the voltage to the adapter. The voltage was there but the adapter just wouldn't even spin the drive platter.
Too bad it has failed just after warranty. I now don't have any recourse to replace it so I might have to buy another one and hope it doesn't fail.

Pros: Clever product that works very well. There are not a lot of solutions that allow you to use IDE and SATA. The solution is well designed and they give you everything you need.

Cons: Yellow IDE Cable is a very tight fit to pins on drive, definitely too tight. It seems like IDE connectors do vary, but it was rather difficult to push connector onto multiple drivers. It's also very easy to break plastic when pulling the cable out of a drive. Since the best application of this adapter is to reuse for multiple drives, more attention should have been given to actually how easy it is to move to another drive.

Other Thoughts: Customer service was outstanding. I had to get a replacement adapter, and their RMA service was one of the best I ever dealt with. Very efficient and prompt.

Pros: This adapter works very well with the old IDE's. Easy to attach and detach.

Cons: This might be a bad thing. I have had 2 hard drives just recently to crash right after I placed them in the adapter and plugged them into the docking station and turned it on.
now both drives are damaged! I tried the docking station without the adapter with known good drives and they work fine. Doing more test to verify adapter is causing the crashes. I may change this review later when I find out if this adapter caused it.

Pros: We use 4 of these in our shop and have had no issues with any of the units. The oldest two are just over a year old now. These two are used in our service shop almost daily, and both have a few hundred cycles. The other two are used in the R&D lab and have had a little lighter usage. As far as cables being tight, screws a pain, etc., as mentioned in other reviews, I haven't had any issues. Yes, the cables are short (it is, by nature, a tight space) and we don't use screws often as these are not used for anywhere near permanent mounting, but no abnormal issues have been found with cables or screws. Units have been used with everything from Windows/Linux/Unix to our custom RTOS drive recovery packages and haven't dropped a bit from a byte yet (knock on a floppy!)

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I suppose the cables may be frustrating if you let them be. They do loosen up after a few cycles. The design, along with the StarTech dual and quad docks have been the easiest, most reliable setup we've used to date for frequent drive swapping...and I've personally been swapping drives since 8-inch Shugarts. If your hardware setup is right (MB, don't mess around with USB, etc.), you should be happy. Would definitely recommend as a 'clean up the cables' method to anyone with a shop/lab that does this kind of stuff for a living.

Pros: looks cool and looks like it should work; heck if it was a long plate that stuck out the front of the dock with a handle on it to pull it out with 2foot long wires that stuck out the front and actually simply plugged into the ide hard drive you were trying to get the data off of heck that would work just somewhat lacking on the actual fuctionality great idea but non fuctional

Cons: looks first rate, once you finally figure out how to fold the wire/ribbon to tuck it out of the way (a process of elimination as there are only two possibilities) on each set of wires (ribbon) and (power) you will finally be able to see how the wires can tuck with the remove wire pull handles down rather than up. then be careful not to snug the pair of screws on the bottom too tight like I did and strip one out (still held it) ok then once you have the whole thing snugged up and are ready to put it into the "StarTech" hard drive dock like it says it is for. Then it won't go in past the screw heads (maybe with a hammer) so I took an xacto knife and trimmed (MUTILATED) the dock a tiny bit so that the bloody monolith would actually fit inside the "StarTech" dock then it either 1) wouldn't make contact or 2) wasn't lined up or 3) wires weren't actually making contact on the sata power and data connections. (note:this drive worked b4 this and worked after this but not for this adapter

Other Thoughts: it could be that I simply got a defective one as it didn't even glimmer at all even remotely towards working in both an antec and a StarTech hard drive dock bay. Heck even if it had the cords two feet long so you could simply sit the hard drive in front of your computer and slide a unit into the drive bay and it would actually make contact with the contacts new set up but wouldn't reconize it
GA-990 UD7
AMD AM3 8150
G.SKIL 4X4 16GBXL
EVGA Nvidia GTX 570HD 2650MB
WD 1TB SATA III
OCZ750 FAT1LITY
never did reconize this adapter for IDE to SATA
it'd be interesting to try another but not since I had to pay for the shipping to me on a guinea pig priduct to see if it worked $3 or so shipping isn't a lot but never did work. It felt as if it went in far enough to make contact and that last feeling of pushing into the contacts was felt just no work

Pros: ugh

Cons: my 90's era computer can format this 300GB IDE drive just fine, using the IDE port on the motherboard... but when I try formatting the same drive on Windows XP Pro, using this adapter in an external StarTech SATA dock, the format just hangs at 4% complete.

This happens with the drive policy set for either "performance" or also "quick removal".

It's funny, 'cause I'm using the same brand of drive as is shown in the pictures in the instruction book of this adapter.

I am able to cancel the format and perform a "quick" format instead.

after quick formatting the drive, I can copy files to it at about 3/4 the speed of my old 90's era computer.

the fact that I can't do a regular format of the drive with this adapter indicates that something is probably wrong or not reliable with the adapter...

Pros: includes adapter cables for both 2.5" and 3.5" IDE drives

Cons: unable to secure drive into the adapter because the cables get in the way of the drive being inserted fully. to fully insert the drive you would have to apply so much pressure to the cables that you might damage them, and even then it doesn't look like the drive can be inserted far enough. the design is faulty. maybe with a different cable it might work, but I am using the cable that was included.

there is very poor access to the recessed IDE port and power connector on the adapter, increasing chance of damage to the cable and the port

the IDE cable comes with plastic 'pull-ribbon' on each end which allows you to more safely pull the cable out of the port. unfortunately, the pull-ribbon is attached via cheap plastic and it broke off immediately.

no benchmarking or integrity testing software is included or made available for download with your purchase, so unless you're already a tech geek who already has these tools available, how do you know this is even working all that

Other Thoughts: my order was lost, so I placed a new order, 11 days later I finally received it, and I still can't get a refund on my original order... judging from the package and shipping label it looks like this item is maybe drop shipped by a 3rd party which would explain why my order got lost. the tracking says it shipped but UPS never got the package... so...


It seems like all the adapters out there are cheap and low quality. I am hoping this one is more reliable than most on the theory that since they designed this clever adapter for docks, maybe they put some effort into making it actually work right. too bad they weren't clever enough to allow the drive to physically attach to the adapter like it is supposed to.