ldopa.net

Around the ldopa.net offices* we’ve found these 12$ (shipped!) Cyclone USB2 adapters to be insanely useful. If you have a bare IDE drive, what you used to have to do to scrape the data off or just temporarily use the drive would be:

1. turn off your computer.
2. set the IDE jumper to “top” or “bottom” or something.
3. open the case.
4. install the drive in the case.
5. plug in the power cable.
6. close the case.
7. turn on your computer.
8. pray everything worked ok; if not, reverse all these steps and change the jumper setting.
9. when done, reverse all these steps and remove the drive.

There’s got to be a better way! Well, now there is:

1. plug the IDE drive into the cyclone USB adapter (and the supplied power adapter if it’s a 3.5″ or 5.25″ drive).
2. plug the whole ugly mess into your computer.

…totally worth the $12 if you have any IDE drives lying around.

~jeff

* ldopa.net offices may contain trace amounts of non-existance.