Oh this is so sweet. Being that I have more hardware than I know what to do with, it’s great to see that if I start piling up with the SATA drives they will be able to be used outside of the PC itself.

You certainly would not want to operate a bare hard drive externally more than occasionally, but those occasions do exist. For example, after you build a new computer or decide to upgrade your disk, your old drive will likely sit somewhere on a shelf - and then you’ll realize that you forgot to copy some files from it. When I notice these things, I’m usually in a hurry, so crawling under the desk to disassemble half of my carefully assembled rig is not an option. But the USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE adapter from Brando certainly is.

There are multiple motherboards that feature interface options to attach hard drives externally. While eSATA (external SATA) is the future standard for external consumer and entry-level business class storage devices, there are still many home-made solutions. These solutions are as simple as providing a Serial ATA connector at the back panel of a motherboard, so this connector can be accessed from outside the PC. Gigabyte is a good example: the firm has been good at shipping external SATA (not eSATA) cables with some of its motherboard products…. Source: TH