Brando S-ATA/IDE USB Cable

After running HDTach on the connected drive I came up with the following results.

An average read rate of 24.4Mb/s. Notice that the “curve” is pretty much flat, the drive is over-powering the interface of the converter. HD Tune tends to agree on the “curve” although they disagree as to the average rate and CPU utilization.

That trend continues on the onboard native SATA headers.

HD Tune is considerably closer on the native SATA headers but there is still some discrepancy but nowhere near the radical difference I saw on the USB interface.

Well, to sort through it all and get to the bits and bobs let’s see how it fared.

Dongle
• Supports most popular drive interfaces
• Includes a dedicated power supply
• Doesn’t require time consuming disassembly to swap drives
• Works with a wide variety of drive formats
• Integrated drive access LED

Dangle
• Limited documentation
• IDE section of the test unit was DOA
• No carry case

The Brando USB SATA/IDE Converter could be a handy tool for the home enthusiast as long as the unit is working properly. With the IDE interface being DOA on the test unit I was unable to see exactly how well it would work for, say, slapping a CDRW drive on the cable and pulling files off to CD-R which for a home service tech would be of great benefit when dealing with a customer’s PC that lacks a burner although I suppose you could do the same thing with a SATA drive you tote with you in your toolkit. Sadly though in my opinion, if it’s only partially working it’s lost a large percentage of it’s usefulness. On that thought I’m awarding the Brando USB to SATA/IDE Converter a 5/10 and giving it the caveat that “Your mileage may vary”.

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