Can you make usb2 external hard drives into USB3?
Can this be done by still keeping them in their original USB2 cases (IDE and SATA) rather than put them into USB3 CASES

Just in case have sent for a Novatech 2.5" and 3.5" SATA HDD/SSD Docking Station V2 - USB 3.0 - Black £12.49 ex vat

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Motherboard on the computer must support Usb 3.0, otherwise it will run at USB 2.0 Speed

You could buy a Usb 3.0 card if it`s a Desktop computer, but not a laptop.

I have a laptop with USB3 and lots of hard drives in and not in USB2 cases and am spending hours moving data from one hd to another

Usb 3.0 will be a lot faster then. I just moved all my files from 2 other laptops with Usb 2. wasn`t to slow. I used A Belkin Easy Transfer cable, but with about 500,000 files and loads duplicated it`s taking me a while to sort. I cant get your link to work, it just hangs. I`ll try again in a minute or so.

The reading or getting the data off wont be that slow by design of usb 2

The slow part is the writing of the data via usb 2 technology.

Pen drives are also slower at writing the data than retrieving it.

Just plan the time better.
Knowing that writing to a drive via usb 2 is time consuming.

You may invest in a usb 3 external drive if its that big of an issue. But its the writing the data thats the slow bit only.

Copy the data direct to your laptop if you have the space first. Then set it away as you go for your tea.

Not using origional cables can slow things also. Just a side note.

Derek the link you used is not for IDE drives which I suspect your hard drives are.

There wont be any benefit an ide drive using usb 3 tech as the hard drive wouldn't be able to keep up at a guess.

If you old hard drives are sata drives then that will speed up the process the item in your link.

Got your link to work at last, looks real handy if you have spare drives knocking around. Mark mentioned another gadget in another post, I bought one of these ages ago and the speed was that slow I had to do it over night for just one drive.. Not recommended unless desperate.