Review: Gizoo IDE Sata Driver

If you build and maintain your own PCs then you probably need the rather mysteriously named IDE Sata Driver from on-line gadget vendor Gizoo.

The IDE Sata Driver is a set of parts; a power supply, interface box and various cables. It allows you to power up a naked hard disk drive and connect it to a PC via a USB2 cable. This is very convenient if you only want to perform some quick tests or backup some data, without all the hassle of opening up a PC for even a temporary install of the disk.

The main component is a small silver interface box, with five connectors distributed around all four sides. On one side is the mini USB port for connection to a PC.

Sitting alongside this is a four-pin AMP connector that connects to the switching power supply. A four pin AMP splitter cable is also included and can be used to split the power supply output between the interface and a drive if required, although the PSU is limited to a maximum of 2 amps.

On opposing sides of the interface are Parallel ATA IDE connectors in both standard and laptop mini sizes. On the fourth side is a combo connector for serial ATA data and power.

Three LEDs on the top surface of the interface box indicate power, read/write and serial ATA activity and there’s an illuminated button, labelled One Touch Backup, of which more later. A short IDE cable, two small pamphlet-style manuals and the driver software on an 8cm CD, complete the kit.

Installation is a bit tricky since the instructions are poorly translated and actually refer to another product, an external IDE drive enclosure, rather than to the IDE Sata Driver. We gave up on them and just followed normal practice of first installing the software, applying mains power to the units power supply and then finally plugging it in to a USB port.

After a short wait the host system identified the IDE Sata Driver as a connected USB device and loaded its driver. Our test hard disk then appeared as a new logical disk volume listed under Hard Drives in My Computer. This logical disk behaved much like any other disk in the system and we were able to perform all of the disk tests and operations normally available to any system drive.

The One Touch Backup feature allows instant file backup from any system disk to any disk connected to the IDE Sata Driver. Pressing the oval button on the IDE Sata Driver interface box launches the Fnet PCclone Ex Lite software on the host PC. Every time the backup button is pressed, any source files, selected using the PCclone software, will be copied to the designated drive connected to the IDE Sata Driver interface.

It’s possible to connect two drives at once to the IDE Sata Driver, although they require different interfaces; for example you can connect a standard IDE parallel ATA drive and a serial ATA drive.

Of course, connection isn’t limited to hard drives, but any device that uses the same interfaces; a CD or DVD drive can be connected, although depending on the drive it may be necessary to use the provided 7cm long IDE ribbon cable.

Using the IDE Sata Driver we were able to restore a hard disk from a laptop that we couldn’t repair in situ. If you regularly fool around with computer hardware the IDE Sata Driver is a very useful device to have in your toolbox.

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