King Pitcos Posted January 14, 2011 Posted January 14, 2011 Just bought a cheap one of these on ebay (it's got a SATA port as well, but that's irrelevant to me at the moment) to get the data from an old laptop with a fucked power supply. I've taken the 2.5" hard drive out of the laptop, connected it all up to the desktop, and XP recognises the USB device and the hard drive as connected devices. I can hear/feel the drive spinning... But it doesn't show up in My Computer or Disk Management or anything. Â Anyone got experience with these things? Â One of the instructions that came with the device is "Connect AC power to SATA/IDE device" suggesting that the converter cable itself isn't strong enough to power the drive properly. Which renders it fucking useless, surely?
Paid Members SiMania Posted January 14, 2011 Paid Members Posted January 14, 2011 Can you power the drive up from the power supply in the PC?
Paid Members SiMania Posted January 14, 2011 Paid Members Posted January 14, 2011 Ignore me, I just read it was a 2.5" hard drive.
Rossman Posted January 14, 2011 Posted January 14, 2011 If you laptop hard drive is SATA you can plug a SATA molex power connector straight into it because 2.5" & 3.5" SATA drives have the same connections. Â If its IDE you need something like below to connect it up. Â Â It basically converts a 2.5" drive to have the connections of a normal hard drive so you can plug it into your desktop PC. Â The thing you've bought will work with a SATA hard drive (if you plug a molex connector into it) but its need a power source for an IDE hard drive.
King Pitcos Posted January 14, 2011 Author Posted January 14, 2011 The thing you've bought will work with a SATA hard drive (if you plug a molex connector into it) but its need a power source for an IDE hard drive. What kind of power source?
Stylin_and_Profilin Posted January 14, 2011 Posted January 14, 2011 Just mains power, i got a IDE/Sata converter but it came with a AC adapter to run off the mains to power the drive.
King Pitcos Posted January 14, 2011 Author Posted January 14, 2011 Was yours something like this, Stylin'? http://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-SATA-IDE-CABLE...7944&sr=8-2 Â When the converter I have is connected, I don't see any room on the connector end of the drive to attach a power supply to. In the laptop, it was only connected via IDE. So I'm guessing I'd have to buy an adapter with a power supply and the 2.5" to 3.5" converter in Rossman's picture.
Rossman Posted January 14, 2011 Posted January 14, 2011 A 2.5" drive has 44 pins so that may be why there is no room to connect the power. If you run it through a converter, its 40 pins and then you plug in a power source. Â Something like this or this would be a lot easier to use.
King Pitcos Posted January 15, 2011 Author Posted January 15, 2011 I'd still need the USB adapter/power supply thing as well though -- I don't want to connect anything to the motherboard of my PC, if I can help it (PC's a bit fucked, and backing everything up for hard drive replacement in there is the ultimate intention of this USB-to-IDE plan). Ideally, I'll do the actual file transfer via this 2.5" drive and a properly-enclosed external drive via a netbook. Â I could just buy an external 2.5" drive enclosure, but those are only USB-powered so would that work?
Rossman Posted January 15, 2011 Posted January 15, 2011 I'd still need the USB adapter/power supply thing as well though -- I don't want to connect anything to the motherboard of my PC, if I can help it (PC's a bit fucked, and backing everything up for hard drive replacement in there is the ultimate intention of this USB-to-IDE plan). Ideally, I'll do the actual file transfer via this 2.5" drive and a properly-enclosed external drive via a netbook. I could just buy an external 2.5" drive enclosure, but those are only USB-powered so would that work?  Yeah, an external enclosure will work. A 2.5" drive should run off a single USB cable if you're running it on a USB 2 port. If its USB 1 or a power hungry hard drive it needs 2 USB cables plugged into it. Like this one.
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