External power to 2.5" sata hdd leads to clicking noise

[ghostman]

I don't keep up with the tech stuff anymore, so bear with me if this is a stupid question.

I have a working 2.5" sata hdd. It works fine if I install it into a laptop. A long while back, I bought an USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter. I figured I could pull data off the sata drive with this cable. But the moment I plug the external power in, the hard drive just starts clicking. Not surprisingly, it doesn't work. The hdd is fine if I stick it back into a laptop.

The power adapter terminates in a molex connector, but the USB-IDE/SATA kit came with a molex-to-sata power adapter. I actually have a second power adapter with a molex end that I used to power an old internal DVD burner back in the day. It powers the DVD burner just fine, but also makes the sata hdd click.

Any idea why? Sounds like I'm not giving the SATA enough power (or too much).

For reference, the power supply looks like this:
http://www.modchipcentral.com/store/images/D/molex.jpg

 

[mfenn]

It looks like that power adapter only provides voltage on either the 12V or the 5V, but not both. It's hard to tell which one from the pic, but I think it's 12V. That won't work if your drive needs 5V (or both 12V and 5V) to spin up.

 

[ghostman]

The adapter output does say both 12V and 5V on it, though I've never tried it on anything other than older IDE desktop drives.