As the capacities and prices of hard drives drop it becomes so very tempting to replace existing hard drives with something bigger, and perhaps faster. But what to do with the old drives? External drive cases, let’s face it, are passé–and in some instances will cost you more than the drive they’ll house is worth. Docks are a nice idea, and definitely offer more flexibility. But what if you’ve a hankering to go portable? Unitek’s got you covered: a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter that will get your ‘old’ drive running and on your desktop in no time.

The Unitek adapter, available over at Brando for $48, has a USB 3.0 compliant connector for the PC side, and a SATA Gen2i (3 Gbps) and Gen1i (1.5 Gbps) compliant connector for a 3.5-inch drive at the other. Th econnector will support ATA/ATAPI devices, and drives up to 2 TB. USB 3.0 will allow a theoretical data transfer rate of 5.0 Gbps, but the actual rate will be governed by SATA’s slightly lower data throughput.

The only drawback to the connector is USB 3.0, which isn’t yet mainstream. The initial round of USB 3.0 equipped motherboards are supposed to be hitting the streets about now. And for the rest of us languishing in USB 2.0 purgatory, we’ll be needing to invest in an add-in card.

Image Credit: Unitek