stupid little question

[ZippyDan]

a friend of mine bought a hard drive enclosure at frys that doesnt come with a power adaptor. put a hitachi 60gb 7200 rpm laptop hard drive in there and it doesnt seem to work. he thinks its the lack of power. if so, how do i know what power adaptor to get (theres no manual or anything, back of enclosure only shows polarity? do i just try to match an adaptor to the power specs of the drive (http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/7k60/7k60.htm)? if not, what else could be the problem?

here is the enclosure website http://www.coolmaxusa.com/hd-211.html which offers little help imo. i still wonder what the USB power adaptor is (the data cable actually has three USB plugs. one to the computer, one to the enclosure, and a third one in red that says power on it. i have no idea what to do with it. that is in addition to the normal power adaptor plug on the back of the enclosure)

thanks

~Zippy!

 

[So]

Well, what type of plug is the third one? The pic on the website makes it look like another USB plug. If it is, try plugging it into a USB port on the host PC.

 

[sswingle]

It says right on the product specs its USB power. Probably the red plug. Just make sure you plug it directly into the PC and not a USB hub, as it won't get enough power out of a hub.

 

[ZippyDan]

ya except the laptop im plugging it into only has 1 usb port :/

~Zippy!

 

[WackyDan]

It's a bus powered drive. I have an IBM 2.5" external enclosure. Comes with two usb cables, one for data and power, the other just for power.

On just the data cable it runs slower, with both I get true USB 2.0 speeds.

So plug the extra usb connector into the extra usb port on your pc or hub only if the hub is powered, and you should be fine. You can only plug it in one way.

 

[SplinterDB]

Originally posted by: ZippyDan
ya except the laptop im plugging it into only has 1 usb port :/

~Zippy!

It looks like the time to get a PCI\USB adapter you can get a extra 4 ports for $25-35.

 

[Jiggz]

If you only have one USB port on your laptop, the only solution is to get a powered USB hub. There's a lot of them in the market. What it is, it's USB hub with a separate power adaptor. When you plug the usb hub to the usb port, you must also plug in the power adapter. In this way you can use two usb ports from the hub while at the same time getting power to the hdd enclosure.

 

[ZippyDan]

well the hard drive is definitely spinning up with both usb cables plugged in (trying it on a desktop now). but windows doesnt seem to be recognizing it.

i just formatted the hard drive and still nothing.

~Zippy!