It checks today's price at every store, compares the alternatives and answers in about a minute.
A short adapter cable that connects a 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA hard drive or SSD to a computer's USB port. It runs USB 3.0 with UASP, which speeds up transfers on supported systems, and needs no separate power for 2.5-inch drives. It is a bare cable, not an enclosure, so the drive stays exposed and 3.5-inch drives need a 12V/2A adapter you supply. Buyers rate it well for data migration, drive cloning and recovering files from old drives; it is cheaper and simpler than a full docking station but lacks a case, power switch and card slots.
Availability unknown
Lowest price we've seen: $12.15 on Nov 3 at Walmart. Tracked across 1 store since Nov 3.
Buyers rate it 4.6 out of 5 across 12 ratings, mostly for simple file recovery and drive cloning. The common caveat is that 3.5-inch drives need their own power adapter.
This adapter cable connects a 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch SATA hard drive or solid-state drive to a computer through USB. It lets you use a drive as external storage, back up data, migrate data, clone a drive or retrieve files from an old SATA drive. It can also be used to upgrade a laptop's storage externally with an SSD over USB 3.0.
Transfer rates reach up to 5 Gbps on a USB 3.0 port and up to 480 Mbps on a USB 2.0 port. When the computer, the drive and the system all support UASP, speeds can be up to 20% faster than conventional USB 3.0. The cable is 45 cm long and the housing is black plastic.
A 2.5 inch HDD or SSD needs no extra power. A 3.5 inch HDD or SSD needs a 12V/2A power adapter. A new drive should be partitioned before use. For an old drive that doesn't work, back up the data first, then try partitioning it. Optical drives are not supported, including Blu-ray, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD+RW combo devices.
