How about a USB 2.0/3.0 SATA 6G adapter that works with just about any hard drive or solid state drive and even has fast transfer speeds on a PowerPC Mac too? Check out – the Apricorn USB to SATA 6G adapter.
This PNY SSD previously wouldn’t work inside a PowerPC Mac as it wouldn’t be detected on the native SATA bus or the flashed PCI SATA cards.. but it can still be useful in early Intel Macs or as a flash drive. If you’re someone who wants to transfer large files between computers of multiple generations and have a couple extra drives laying around, this adapter may be for you!
Prices on eBay in Early 2025
The prices for this adapter seem rather unreasonable in April 2025, with many listings on eBay hovering around ~$50 USD. Fortunately, there are some listings still which have more reasonable prices.
Intel Mac performance
- It runs fast as expected on a late Intel Mac.
PowerPC Mac performance
- When being used on a 2003 Dual 2.0 Power Mac G5, the file transfer speeds are great.
(Above: On a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0)
(Above: How it shows up on a Power Mac G5 in System Profiler)
(Above: Zoom in on image. on DLSD 1.67 15″ G4)
Apple Silicon Mac performance
- Tested on an M4 MacBook Air 15″ (Early 2025)
In Conclusion
This is a bit of a Swiss army knife when it comes to the generations of Macs one would encounter as a Mac or tech enthusiast. You can interface with modern SSDs that normally wouldn’t work on older platforms and get them going, bypass the 128 GB limit even, have blazing fast transfer speeds on newer Macs while also getting the most out of the speeds of older Macs too.
All in all this is a very worthwhile adapter to grab, although there are many aftermarket USB to SATA adapters out there also.
