IDE to USB-- Oh, So Cool

One of my wife's co-workers has become a good friend to us over the years. She helped keep our kids while my wife and I were out of town. A favor like that is hard to fully pay back.

Before our out of town trip, our friend ended up with a computer virus on her laptop. I cleaned it off for her and gave it back to her-- all nice and clean again. She gave me a gift certificate to a really high class restaurant in exchange for my help. Sweet!

I will work for food . . .

But not long after that, her computer wouldn't boot at all. It wouldn't even go through the Power On Self Test routine (POST). That's bad news. Something isn't soldered properly to the mother board any longer or something. That reaches a bit beyond my skill level. I don't go around soldering mother boards. I think it might be time to learn, though. If I had soldering skills, I could probably fix a lot of things that would otherwise be thrown away.

Anyway, after getting a second opinion about her laptop, she is now in the market for a new computer or a new mother board-- which ever comes cheapest.

She can by a netbook or mini laptop for the quoted price of a replacement motherboard. Hmmmm . . .

But what about that poor hard drive of hers? Nothing is wrong with it to my knowledge. I think her laptop is totally suffering from bad wiring. If only I could somehow access her hard drive. I could make an image of her OS and restore it to her new laptop and everything will come back as though nothing happened.

I conceived of such a device in my mind's eye, but didn't know what it was called or where I could find one. I didn't know if anyone even made such a device.

A few days later, I watch my co-worker plug in a hard drive into some gadget thingy that he just bought. He told me that it converted a computer hard drive into a USB drive.

That's just what I imagined I would need! Awesomeness!

I ordered one the same day. It can convert SATA drives and IDE drives (even from laptops) into a USB drive. You plug it in and your computer and you can see the drive. You can make a disk image, scan the drive for viruses-- what ever you want! The SATA / IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter is awesome!

I made a boot-able disk image that's ready to restore to any other hard drive. Once our friend gets her new netbook, I can restore her Windows image to the new computer and all her programs and personal information will reappear like magic. Or, if we do get a new motherboard, she'll have a backup of her laptop. If another virus comes along, we can just scrub the hard drive and restore the last good image.

Tonight, I feel like a technological Jedi.