Feb 16, 2011 11:50 GMT  ·  By

There are quite a few sorts of connectors on the market, and sometimes it becomes necessary to come up with such things as converters, something that Sharkoon knows well if its new adapter is anything to go by.

While at one point floppy disks and optical disks were the only widespread means of moving data form one PC to another, this has not been the case for years.

Now, there are various flash drives, external/portable hard drives and solid state drives, all of them with varying degrees of data protection and performance.

Still, there is one, cruder, way of transferring files that never gets old and yet precedes most existing forms of portable storage.

Basically, one can simply take out the hard drive form a PC and take it over and place it inside another one.

Unfortunately, this process is tedious, and there are also those systems that would end up voiding their warranties if they are unsealed.

For such cases where one needs to hook up a SATA drive externally, Sharkoon built the DriveLink USB3.0.

Basically, it is an adapter that connects any SATA HDD, SSD or hybrid drive, or even an optical drive, via the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard.

For those that want to refresh their memory, USB 3.0 allows data transfers to be made at a theoretical maximum rate of 5 Gbps.

The supported form factors for hard drives, SSDs and hybrids are 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch, while ODDs can come in the 5.25-inch package.

Also, the maximum capacity that the converter can handle is 2 TB, while a special button can perform data backup should consumers so desire.

Of course, for said button to do its job, the system will have to be loaded with the necessary software (included in the bundle).

The Sharkoon DriveLink USB3.0 should already be selling in Europe for 21 Euro and has been detailed here.