SATA Drive Dock

[smason]

Anyone who does any serious computer work will likely have a SATA to USB adapter, and / or a SATA drive dock for doing disk recovery, image backups etc.
Mine have saved my butt more times than I can remember.

So I have a Vantec SATA dock on my desktop connected via E-SATA.
Wheneve I'm working on a slow POS computer, I'll yenk the drive and put it in there. Malware scans, data recover and backups are waay faster. I've been using it for years. Last month my wife's notebook started having issues.
I went to do an image backup, and when I popped her drive in the dock it gave the of so sickening sound "ca-click ca-click ca-click".
Uh ohh. I may be too late.
I messed with it a bit, but couldn't get my computer to recognize it.
I was all ready to put a new drive in, and restore, but just for grins I put it back in her notebook, and it booted. Did an emergency image backup over the LAN. Meanwhile I popped a desktop SATA drive in the dock and it worked fine. Weird.

Then yesterday for troubleshooting purposes, I needed to take an image of a SSD and put it on a notebook drive. Image from the SSD created successfully, popped in the notebook drive - ca-click ca-click.
WTF?
Then I got to thinking. Notebook drives use 5v for the motor right?
Desktop drives use 12v.
I pull the dock and take it to the bench. Open it up, yep, the 5v is unstable under load.

Crack open the brick power supply (literally crack open) and there we have 4 tocon bloaters.
The worst is a 680uf 16v that measures about 30uf and 50 ohms ESR.

And of course I don't stock anything near 680 @ 10 or it's buddy 680 @16.
Of well was due for a digikey order...

[Uranium-235]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

I have had that happen before with those vantec adapters (still have one, still in use today)

last time this happened it was cause I had used an usb extension cord, when you add length to a dc power wire of any kind it acts as a resistor, lowering the voltage.

we actually had a customer hdd we thought died on us suddenly cause of this and let it sit for months. suddenly we tried it in a laptop and it worked

maybe your onboard usb voltage in the system is degrading

[smason]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

maybe your onboard usb voltage in the system is degrading

Nope it's definitely the power supply. Not using USB here, E-SATA

[Uranium-235]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

thats right, what I get for skimming posts

ether way, yeah i've seen laptop drives act dead if their voltage is even a little bit too low

[goontron]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

thats right, what I get for skimming posts

ether way, yeah i've seen laptop drives act dead if their voltage is even a little bit too low

don't forget some electronics a.k.a CPU,GPU,motors,ect. can be killed by low/high voltage as well...

[smason]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

My boss's boss brought me one of the same units yesterday. Asked me to determine if the drive was dead, or the dock. Checked, dock. I told him I'd fix it and give it back in the morning. I said it was likely a $0.50 part. He looked at me like I was an alien.
Brought it back this morning, showed him the 4 bad caps. First he said "aren't those soldered in?" Yup.
Then, "where did you get parts on a Monday night?"
I had them in stock.
Another look, like I was an alien...

I have another at home, and 3 more at work. I should probably do a preemptive recap.

[ben7]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

My boss's boss brought me one of the same units yesterday. Asked me to determine if the drive was dead, or the dock. Checked, dock. I told him I'd fix it and give it back in the morning. I said it was likely a $0.50 part. He looked at me like I was an alien.
Brought it back this morning, showed him the 4 bad caps. First he said "aren't those soldered in?" Yup.
Then, "where did you get parts on a Monday night?"
I had them in stock.
Another look, like I was an alien...

I have another at home, and 3 more at work. I should probably do a preemptive recap.

And you should get pics too, just for the heck of it! xD

LOL, did your boss give you a raise? :P

[Gariarto]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

Nice catch Smason ! I use a SATA dock branded Thermaltake BlacX thru USB 2.0 and a couple of external caddies thru E-SATA. Invaluable tools for the last couple of years I have to agree. Now you've put curiosity in my mind darn it !! They work fine but now I have to look in the power adapters ! Particularly the USB dock since I HAVE had odd laptop drives in there that I wanted to declare faulty in the USB dock but they'd seem OK on a regular connection.

I know, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" I just want to see...... No point in waiting for failure right ! ?

[smason]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

And you should get pics too, just for the heck of it! xD

LOL, did your boss give you a raise? :P

No raise

Here are a couple crappy pics of the supply

[Phaihn]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

My Hard drive dock is built right into my desktop computers only issue is its not hot swappable so i have to shut the computer off or restart it after putting in a drive runs right off of my computers psu.

[Phaihn]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

my hard drive dock/computer.

[mariushm]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

I don't recognize that power supply label... what brand is that?

Seems like a super cheap, crap one, from the pictures.

[Phaihn]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

thermaltake tr2 430w

[Phaihn]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

thermaltake tr2 430w

[smason]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

My Hard drive dock is built right into my desktop computers only issue is its not hot swappable so i have to shut the computer off or restart it after putting in a drive runs right off of my computers psu.

Pretty cool that it's built-in. Really lame that it's not hot swap. I'd kill myself if I had to reboot every time I had to access a drive in the dock.

[Phaihn]

Re: SATA Drive Dock

Pretty cool that it's built-in. Really lame that it's not hot swap. I'd kill myself if I had to reboot every time I had to access a drive in the dock.

yeah its just an extension of the sata cable at least i dont have to hook up the sata cable and power cable with too much trouble.