Peripheral manufacturer Brando has come up with this adaptor to turn your old SATA HDDs into useable external ones, using USB 3.0. The Unitek USB 3.0 adaptor slots into the back of your HDD (can be used on IDE based drives too with an IDE to SATA adaptor) and allows the drives to transfer data at speeds up to 5.0Gb/s.

Obviously you’ll need a USB 3.0 compliant PC whether by motherboard or a PCI card to gain the full potential of USB 3.0 but the specs also say it can be used in a USB 2.0 port without the obvious extra speed. It will support Windows XP, Vista and 7 and can be used on capacities up to 2TB.  Prices start from $48(plus shipping costs) but surely this is a cheap way to get stuck into any old HDDs you have lying around.