Having a faulty drive is never fun, especially when critical files are at risk of being a distant memory. After many failed attempts to recover the drive on my Lenovo integrated system, it was apparent that several Windows files were corrupt and I needed to rebuild it. However, I needed to backup files from this drive, before wiping it clean.
I’ve done this many times before, so I felt comfortable with the whole process and to help in this recovery effort, I picked up the USI-2535 hard drive adapter from Kingwin from Microcenter. Simple and easy to use, I was able to recover the contents of the drive, while my coffee remained warm at my side.
By design, the portable drive adapter comes armed with a 3-1 connector system, enabling connection to many drive types, including a 3.5” IDE drive, 2.5” IDE connector or a 2.5”/3.5” SATA drive. So, whether you are backing up a drive from a laptop or a desktop, it’s all possible with this 3-1 adapter.
Here’s the process:
1) Removing the defective drive from the system: While there are differences in the location of the hard drive on the motherboard, you need to first locate it and remove it. This might require some research on Google or YouTube to see the process to remove the hard drive. For this system, I had to turn it upside down and remove the bottom cover. I would also recommend using a magnetic screwdriver to easily remove and capture the smaller screws.
Underside of the system had several mounting screws that were removed. 
Once the cover was removed, the hard drive was easy to find.
2) Time to Connect: Once the drive was removed, I then hooked it up to the adapter with the provided cable. From there, I simply hooked up the drive to my laptop via USB, so that the files could be swapped over to this laptop.
Hooking the drive to the laptop via the provided USB cable. 
Once connected, the drive was mapped, so that I could drag/drop the files.
3) Time to Drag and Drop: Once the drive was mapped on the laptop, I was able to see the files from that drive, so that they could be moved over. While I did not need it, the adapter came bundled with transfer software.
Mission Accomplished: From there, I returned the drive back to the system and re-installed Windows. Back to my cup of coffee. 🙂
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