Granite Bridge lets you use those internal drives inside out

Back when I worked in IT—lo, those many, er, year ago—pulling hard drives was one of my favorite pastimes. We operated on a cloning system where drives for publicly-used computers would be wiped and refreshed every day or week. New drives would be made from a master image.

Unfortunately, until very late in the process, it was a major pain to pull a drive and insert a new one (screws, brackets, etc.). Something like the Granite USB to SATA/IDE Bridge would have been crazy useful . It turns any internal drive SATA or IDE drive into an external USB drive, without even the need for an enclosure. Just plug one end into the drive and the other end into the computer and shazam . It also includes a universal power brick. Should work with Macs or PCs (though obviously you’ll have trouble reading a Mac-formatted drive on a PC without the proper software).

Non-geeks are rolling their eyes, but I tell you this: if you need this once , you’ll be a believer. Trust me. I’m willing to go corrupt some data on your drives just to prove it to you . I’m that dedicated. $40 for the complete kit or $25 for the bridge, $20 for the power adapter separately (trust me, save the $5 and get the whole kit).

[via Popgadget ]