Today we took a look at a unique product from Hong Kong based company Brando. The device pictured above is their SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 converter cable. The idea behind the unit is simple, you plug in your IDE or SATA based device and this cable converts the input into USB 2.0 turning the device into an external piece of hard ware. This is similar to how a external hard drive enclosure works but it works with three types of connections. Our cable was also shipped with a power supply to power the IDE/SATA device since it obviously would need to get power from some source other than the PC's PSU if it was to be used outside of the computer case.

Features:

• USB 2.0 interface, 480Mbps high speed data transfer rate, 52x CD-ROM supported
• Hard-disk, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, COMBO device, DVD-RW supported
• Plug and Play
• AC power can be used with input voltage AC 100v-240v
• Support Windows 98SE, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Mac OS
• Under Windows 2000/Me/XP, no driver needed.

The cable comes packaged in the above box along with several other cords which are mainly power supply cords used to power the external device.

Package:

• USB to SATA / IDE cable
• SATA Cable
• SATA Power cord
• AC Power Adapter(100-240v, 50-60Hz)
• AC Power cable
• Driver CD
• User's Manual

The cable looks pretty basic with a USB connector on one end and the converter unit on the other end.

The picture above shows how the converter unit can attach directly to the back of 3.5" hard drive. Also shown is the power supply cord plugged into the 4-pin power connection of the hard drive. When plugging the power cord, the hard drive seemed jolt a bit when powering up. Once it was powered up and spinning everything seemed fine but the initial jolt was a tad worrisome.

The converter unit has two sides with IDE connectors on it. One side is for 3.5" hard drives and the other is for smaller 2.5" hard drives.

The cable can also be used simultaneously by a SATA and IDE device. The image above shows how this scenario would be accomplished. The converter unit plugs directly into the back of the IDE device and then, by using the included SATA cable, the SATA device can be connected to the top of the converter. The Y-power cable is not included with this converter cable.

According to the user manual, no drivers are needed when using the cable on Windows XP. Using a LG 52X CD-ROM drive, we attached the cable to the back of the drive and plugged the other end into the USB port of our PC. Windows immediately recognized something was plugged in and began the installation process.

We were then prompted with the above warning. Crossing our fingers we pressed "Continue Anyway".

Eventually we saw the above notification displayed in the system tray. Appearing to have worked, we were impressed with how easy it was to get the device working.

Once installed, we checked the drives installed. Sure enough our LG CD-ROM drive was found (Drive F:). To make sure it was working we put in a auto-play cd and watched as it successfully loaded. Satisfied with our experience with the CD-ROM drive we tried our 120GB Maxtor 7200RPM hard drive.

Once connected the same process of installing the device began until we again saw the notification of successful installation.

To test the speed of the cable we transferred 930MB of data from our internal 7200RPM IDE hard drive to the newly USB-attached Maxtor hard drive. After three transfers we arrived at a average time of 45 seconds. This equates to 20.6MB/second or 165.3Mbps.

Overall, we were quite pleased with Brando's product, it does its job very well. Both devices we attached to the cable were instantly recognized and installed on our Windows XP computer without any hassle. Our biggest problem is with the the power supply included. Our CD-ROM drive jolted when the power cord was first connected, and while no visible damage was done, it makes one wonder about potential effects. The other drawback of having a separate power supply powering the drive is that it is constantly spinning even when the computer isn't powered on. This is a waste of electricity and over a long period time could cause the device to age faster than it would being attached to a PC PSU that allows it a break every once and a while. Because of this, we can't recommend that this cable be used a long term solution to convert a hard drive or CD-ROM drive into an external device. That said, an ideal use for this cable and power supply would be for quickly transferring data from a hard drive to another computer in a single session without having to break open the PC case. Once done, the hard drive can be disconnected very easily.

The Brando SATA/IDE to USB2.0 cable can be purchased on their website for $35USD.