EZ Upgrade Universal

A little while back, I bought a Dell Latitude D620 to replace the ThinkPad T42 I had been using for over four years. The Dell, while not new, was a more powerful machine and would tide me over until I buy a new notebook down the road.

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The T42 ran Windows XP SP3, and while the Dell came with the same operating system, I had decided to load Windows 7 Ultimate on the D620. Of course, now I needed to move all the data to the new notebook.

I was going to to use one of my favorite tools, the Apricorn Drivewire Adapter – but one thing I don’t like about it is that it’s just an adapter for the drive to hang off of and you had to use an AC adapter with it. The drive is not enclosed at all.

Since I was going to just be moving data from the old hard drive to the new as you can’t upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, I wanted something in an enclosure, preferably without the need for an AC adapter.

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After poking around the web for a bit, I found that Apricorn had another product that was just was I was looking for, the EZ Upgrade Universal Hard Drive Upgrade Kit.

Just like the Drivewire adapter, it came with the EZ-Gig II software and a USB cable. I popped down to the local Microcenter, and bought one. When I got home, the first thing I noticed  was that it was encased in one of those plastic shells that you need power tools to open up.

After removing the plastic (not fun!), I was left with a cardboard display  which contained the shell, cable, and software. The cardboard also had some brief documentation.

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What I really liked is that the shell for placing the hard drive had some nice heft to it. I was not flimsy at all. You can see in the picture that it has a brushed aluminum look to it, although it felt heavier than aluminum. Over all, it had the feel of a well made piece of machinery. Flipping the shell over, there were a couple of rubber feet to absorb vibrations from the disk rotation.  A little thing, but well thought out.

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The EZ Upgrade Universal had a nifty latch on one end of the case. Just flip the switch and the carrier inside pops out with a satisfying click. There was one thing that I did not like about this  product, and that was the USB cable that came standard. As you can see from the pictures, it’s  pretty short. It’s about 14″. I just think they could have used a longer cable for more flexibility.

I’ve not tested it yet with a generic USB cable.This unit is able to use 2.5″ hard drives in both the SATA and IDE interfaces.

The T42 had an IDE interface, so I just plugged it in to the IDE interface in the shell. Screws are provided to fasten the drive to the carrier if you’re going to use it as an external drive.  Nice touch! I was able copy all the data I needed from the drive to the D620 with no drama and very little noise.