Get geek cred and make use of those old hard drives

One of the better investments you can make in your home computer setup is also one of the geekier ones. I’m talking about our USB to SATA adapter, which has but one simple purpose in life. It takes any bare hard drive and turns it into an external. Who needs those silly looking enclosures anyway when you can simply attach an adapter like this and get blazing fast performance?

Let’s face facts…

CDs and DVDs let you down years ago. 4.7GB? That’s nothing when you’re storing media. You probably tried moving to flash drives but they’re expensive and slow. Cloud storage is great but can you really trust it? Your stuff could get hacked or lost or the internet could go down. Not only that if you’re a creative type working with large images or video, cloud storage is just too… darn… slow.

When you get down to it you need a permanent, cheap solution and this will do nicely. Buy any bare hard drive and use it for storage. Put it on the shelf and take it down when you need it. The 2.5″ ones are barely larger than a deck of cards. Bare hard drives are dirt cheap if you don’t happen to have a shoebox full of them like I do.

You can also use this adapter with cheap solid state drives for super,uber,ultra fast storage too. The whole adapter is small enough to fit in a drawer and you can take it out when needed, or just keep it hooked to your PC for quick use.

Universal use

This adapter works well with PCs and Macs, it even works with Linux and Chromebooks. Some Androids with USB connections can use this device with a USB On the Go Adapter. If you happen to use it with Windows, then you’ll have access to the one-touch backup feature. This is worth setting up for the rare occasion when you can turn your computer on but you can’t really do anything to it. That’s exactly when you need something like this. If you use it on Mac, turn it into a Time Machine drive and you’ll know that your stuff will stay safe.

Whatever you do, back up

No matter what you do, you need to make sure your work’s backed up. It’s just one of those things we all do like brushing our teeth. It’s what grownups do.  Think about it. How many people have told you they lost an important photo when they changed phones? How many friends have asked you for your phone number because they lost their contacts? People don’t back up their data like they should. Don’t be a statistic, choose an option that will help you keep your memories safe.

So, go out and buy yourself a Manhattan USB to SATA adapter. It’s smart, it works, and it’s cheap, The best thing, though, is that it has a sort of cyberpunk, geeky quality that makes you seem thrifty and innovative in a way that will make your friends respect you just a little bit more. That in itself is worth the money, isn’t it?

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.