Home > Consumer Reviews > Adaptec AUA-1420 USB 2.0 2 Port CardBus

I own a 48x24x48 ext usb 2.0 Iomega burner for my notebook and so thought I would get a usb 2.0 pcmcia card for it. Well, to make a long story short I simply couldn't get it to completely install. I downloaded the most recent drivers from Adaptec, followed all their instructions on the website, etc., etc. No go for burning. I was able to get it to read from the external drive, so it wasn't a total waste.

Upon looking at several other reviews I have discovered that many people have had similiar problems with this card, although I have seen one person mention that the Win XP SP1 contained drivers for the card itself I still was unable to get results from it. (I tried it on Win OS's 2000, XP Home and XP Pro with and without the most recent SP's from Microsoft and with older and newer drivers, btw.)

However, one interesting thing I have come across from a few reviewers is it's surprisingly efficient compatibility with Linux! One review that came to mind mentioned Red Hat 7.3 as the one he found it working with.

For those of us who are stuck supporting themselves by using Windows based programs though (mostly page layout) this may be interesting but not really helpful practically. :) I am going to keep the card in the hopes that Adaptec will release a driver that works in the future, though, as I know that this company usually makes excellent products. In the meantime, I bought another usb 2.0 pcmcia card from OrangeMicro.

Here what I had to do to get the adapter to work:
- Go to the Adaptec Website, download the latest driver (Using the Model number on the adapter)
- Go to the Adaptec trouble shoot website and follow the instruction for work around to overwrite the WinXP SP2.
- Reboot then you will be fine.
I give it **** because of the above problem. Otherwise, it worked great with all my external devices( External Hard Drive, DVD burner ...etc)
Note: - Linux setup for this is a lot easier.
- Toshiba laptop may have lower voltage on the PCMCIA slot
so make sure to check it out.

This card is fine for what it is, but it is basically useless for many high-speed applications. If you want USB 2.0, it's probably to feed a thumb disk or a hard drive or a video adaptor...all of which will need the USB port to feed power.

Which this card does not. Unless you plug in the "optional" power supply. Which is not available off the shelf in most stores. Sure, I was able to fashion one myself, but why should I have to? This 95-cent omission on Adaptec's side is a $15 problem on top of the purchase price.

My limit is 2 hours to get a driver + new hardware installed. After two hours I wasn't even close. I got it to drive a mouse, but what I really needed was to be able to connect a memory stick. Never happened. Don't buy this one. Look elsewhere.

I bought this device after buying a Buslink USB2.0 40GB hard drive and experiencing problems when running it through my USB1.1 hub - it was time to either upgrade the hub or make the move to USB2.0. The coin came down on the Adaptec card, mainly because of the speed increase USB2.0 delivers and because it woud give me 2 USB host ports in addition to the single hosr port on my laptop.

The Adaptec card went in ok and installed easy enough - but immediately gave me the same problems I was having with the Buslink drive running through the USB1.1 hub. Not a good start, but it has a happy ending.

I checked the Adaptec web site and downloaded new drivers(V2.2 at the time of writing, V1.1 shipped with the unit). I followed the very clear and simple instructions and a reboot later all was working fine. I've not thrashed the Buslink drive/Adaptec PC Card combination too hard yet, and it's only been going for a day or two, but so far so good.

The Adaptec PC Card/Buslink drive works well and seems faster than the internal drive in my aging laptop (NEC Versa LX, 233MHz, 168 MB, Windows 2000 SP2)

4 stars because of the need to update the driver.