Pros: One of the best little gadgets I've ever purchased. I bought it so that I could use an old IDE optical drive with my netbook, but since then I keep finding more and more uses for it. I can now access hard drives without having to remove them from the computer case, for example. I can even play DVDs over this cable without any serious lag. Use it to breathe new life into old drives, or just as something in your toolkit--either way, you won't be sorry.

Cons: Construction feels a little cheap, and it's rather ugly. Not sure what I'm supposed to attach the ground lead to.

Overall Review: Works with Linux, too. There's a power switch on the device itself, which can come in handy.

Pros: I initially bought this for the sole purpose of getting my EEEPC an optical drive. With this $16 wire, I could scavenge a junky old IDE optical drive from a broken computer and not have to play around with creating a bootable USB key (key itself was probably around $20). The EEEPC recognized this setup without any need to change settings! Since, I have used this to scavenge files off of the aforementioned broken computer's HDD.

Cons: The wires can get very tangled, but the length of the tangleable wires makes connecting everything much easier.

Overall Review: Make sure your IDE jumpers are set to "master"

Pros: Well, it worked for over two years, which I think was pretty good for the little I paid for it back in 2005. Handy notebook adapter for when you have to read from them.

Cons: Won't power notebook drives without the external power supply inserted, made a bit cheaply, but not overly so, dies after two years of frequent use. No connections for SATA, but not terrible if you're just looking to connect an IDE drive once in a while.

Overall Review: For the money I paid for it, I was surprised it lasted even this long, and in retrospect, you can tell that the connections aren't that great, I probably could've taken better care of it

Pros: Does what it says. Had 6 hard drives laying around. Never wanted to bother and open up my pc and install them to check them out. This was the perfect solution. It worked flawlessly out of the box. Did not even install software. Prob not a good idea to leave a device permanently installed this way cause of heat and static, etc.

Cons: none, although a little pouch to keep it all together would be nice.

Overall Review: a no brainer.

Pros: Wall adapter power supply means no need to rely on usb for power. Never had any problems with it.

Cons: Kinda bulky, but no biggy. The power adapter is not permanently attached so someone less organized may lose it.

Overall Review: I much prefer this adapter to my previouse ones which used the USB ports for power. Sometimes the ports would not provide enough power for a hard drive and I couldn't tell if it was a dead hard drive, or just a lack of power from the port. With this adapter you don't have that problem!

Pros: When it works, it is OK.

Cons: I've tried to use it with several drives with several computers. Every time I switch to a different drive or different computer I have to spend a bunch of time changing jumpers, uninstalling, reinstalling, and rebooting before it finally works.

Overall Review: It has been more of a source of aggrevation than any other product I have ever purchased. It was bought over 3-1/2 years ago. Perhaps newer ones are less troublesome.

Pros: It does its job and was recognized by my Samsung NC10 netbook running XP home with no problems.

Cons: It is made out of almost all plastic and I fear that the construction from the Communist Peoples Republic of China my not last the dynasty of my netbook in lifespan.

Overall Review: I paired it with the following from Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151175

Pros: Cheap, very easy to use, is 100% plug-and-play, seems fairly well-made

Cons: None that I can see

Overall Review: I had a hard drive out of an old computer that was a few years old and needed some stuff off of it. The last time it was actually in my old computer, it wouldn't boot up and was basically dead. I purchased this item, had it in my hands in only 2 days, hooked it up to my laptop and literally within less than 1 minute had access to everything on the drive. I couldn't be happier.