If you’re a pack rat and been using computers for more than a couple years, then you likely have a pile of hard drive growing in one of your closet. I know, it’s hard to part with all those 2 GB hard drives that cost you $100+ each and you swear some day you’ll be able to use them for, oh, anything.

Instead of swapping drives in and out of your PC or buying a bunch of hard drive enclosures to figure out what the heck is taking up all those bits and bytes (like long forgotten, juicy private files), the Newertech USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter is a great way to take a quick look at just about any drive you might have lying around.

Design – It includes a one-page instruction manual and 5 cables:

* A three-prong 110 volt AC power adapter with a 4-pin female power plug (in two parts, 32 in. and 48 in. from tip to tip, respectively)
* A 4-pin Molex to 15-pin Serial ATA (SATA) power adapter cable (4 in.)
* A Serial ATA (SATA) cable (19 in.)
* A USB-to-drive adapter cable with a three-sided plastic plug that includes a 40-pin connector, a mini 44-pin connector and a SATA connector. (32 in.) An internal LED lights while the USB is operating and the wall portion of the cable has standard computer power plugs on both sides.

Most cables and plugs are black except for the red SATA cable wire and the 4- to 15-pin adapter which has one white 4-pin plastic plug and two colored wires (red and yellow).

Features – This is a plug-and-play setup that will work with USB 2.0 or 1.1 on PCs running Mac 9.2, Windows 2000 or Linux 2.4x operating systems or better.

Transfer rates claim to be 480 Mbps and will support IDE, enhanced IDE, SATA-I, SATA-II, and work with both hard drives and internal disk drives (CD, DVD, etc.).

Performance – Since this is plug-and-play, it was easy to use with every type of drive I tested (two old 3.5 in hard drives, two old 3.5 in. hard drive and one old <2.5 in. hard drive from an MP3 player). Also, every plug is a specific shape and size so you really can’t mess up any connection (unless you have a problem with square pegs and round holes).

Like most external devices, the speed is only as fast as the slowest device, so actual performance was typically determined by the hard drive speed and the USB connection: Old drives took longer to connect, newer, faster drives were faster and transfers across USB 2.0 were faster than across USB 1.1.

Overall – NewerTech’s USB Universal Drive Adapter is a straightforward, no frills set of cable adapters that does exactly what it is meant to do. It’s ideal for trying to recover data from a damaged drive or assessing the contents of an old drive.

The only feature I might like to see added to the set is a power switch to help avoid a possible spike (or shock) when plugging or unplugging the power cables. Otherwise, it takes longer to take out and unwind the cables than to plug them all in.

Less expensive sets are available with the dual 40-pin/44-pin connectors but typically do not include the SATA adapter and cables. The combined value of all these cables, if purchased individually, would surely be more than $25.

Since it’s meant to be a quick, temporary solution - it does not include a protective enclosure, static protection, cooling fan or surge protection - do not buy this is you need something for more than a couple hours. If you do any type of tech work or play with PC parts, this is a natural addition to your traveling tech arsenal.