Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

[Rulycat]

I had a Seagate 500GB drive from an old system, so I bought a caddy for it. At £10 with delivery to a Collect+ point, this was the cheapest. The case itself is the usual nasty chinese rubbish and it's CiT, whose power supplies are also cheap rubbish. But this is not what surprised me. The PSUs are normally a 5V and 12V gutless wonder which supplies the drive via a PS/2 style port. But this drive has a 12V ONLY PSU! The 5V is delivered via USB. Lazy cost cutting. This is a pain in the arse as this was supposed to be for my Raspberry Pi so I could use it to hold music etc. The Pi has fuses on it's USB which blow over 100mAh or so. The drive wants 800mAh + whatever the controller uses. Looks like I'll have to knock together a cable to cut the power from the Pi and get it from another wall wart.

So this is how manufacturers have kept price down. Cut out components and make it rely on the computer more. Lucky my laptop has USB3.0 because a lot of them won't supply more than 0.5A to connected devices!

Rant over.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

At least tells us something that we do not know ... how much power you can get from a USB3 ?

[mariushm]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

usb 2 is 0.5a per connector, 2a per hub (usually up to 4 connectors tied together)
raspberry pi is in a way usb 2 compliant in the sense that the 100mA is supposed to be if i remember correctly the minimum that the controller can offer and devices can request or something like that.

but since you have 2 amps per controller/hub most hard drives etc take advantage of that.

usb 3 does 5v 0.9a guaranteed and after some negotiation it can even do 12v (the controller has to know how to do it).. about 60-100w though the cable is supposed to work.

[ratdude747]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I've seen many enclosures with a 12V brick and a 5V regulator inside (hooked to the 12V rail)... I assume you'd notice if they did that. Which IMHO is a perfectly fine design, if it's done properly... but running off the USB 5V? Lame. Junk.

Hence why I never cheap on enclosures...

[cheapie]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I've seen a lot of 2.5" models with no 12V and 5V from the USB.

[ratdude747]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I've seen a lot of 2.5" models with no 12V and 5V from the USB.

Because 2.5" drives IIRC don't have 12V in the first place... my Arctic USB3 enclosure doesn''t even need a second USB port (odd since it's supposed to be backwards compatible with usb2 (and does work on USB 2), but it's a well made enclosure and it does work). However, every other external USB powered drive I've seen (Ext. HDD's, 2.5" enclosures, and even an external lightscribe burner) used a piggy back cable with two USB plugs (one is power only).

[domas]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

2.5 drives do not need 12V

that is why i hate 3.5, recently got dual power esata to sata cable: http://img.alibaba.com/photo/5209482...SATA_cable.jpg

I still have to hack it to make it work on 3.5", to add an ext P/S. The wiring is there, but my laptop is not able to supply 12V

[lti]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

Most computers can handle that much current through the USB ports. Some of them can't and end up killing the drive. That happened to me with a 2.5" external hard drive.

I can't tell if any enclosures and their included power supplies are good or not.

[Rulycat]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

Weirdly the drive will actually start without a USb connection, but if you remove the USB while it's running, it shuts down. Strange. The PCB is pretty basic - there doesn't look like any power regulation stuff going on here... then again, I can't see the controller IC, it's on the back of the board.

I've got a solution that should work with the Pi that I'm going to try - A female - female USB adapter I have to make the end female, and a male - male cable from an old 2.5" drive which has two USBs on one end - the power one is going into my Nexus 7 charger. That should keep the thing powered. BUT I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO THIS!

[lti]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I think you could disconnect the 5V power pins from the USB connector and use a 12V and 5V power supply like a better enclosure. I was going to try that with my 2.5" enclosure, but I don't use it often enough and my 5V 1A power supply can't supply enough current to make a drive spin up. The drive does eventually start running, but it clicks for a few seconds.

[Rulycat]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I think you could disconnect the 5V power pins from the USB connector and use a 12V and 5V power supply like a better enclosure. I was going to try that with my 2.5" enclosure, but I don't use it often enough and my 5V 1A power supply can't supply enough current to make a drive spin up. The drive does eventually start running, but it clicks for a few seconds.

That's a good idea, I'm just using what I have to hand atm.

[domas]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I've got something to add to my previous post.. The dual power esata to sata cable i've got, i have hacked it yesterday by making 2 external wires for 12V p/s. And yes i am a cheapo Chinese as well, as now my laptop is supplying 5V and 12V is supplied by ext. p/s. Nothing long term, just for reading smart data and performing few tests. Sometimes for data backup as well. But thats not the point.

So after i have pried apart the sata power side of the cable, I noticed that there are 4 cables: red, black, green and white. My first guess was right, 12V is supplied by red and white wires. But here is a trick: GND is supplied by red wire and +12Vcc is supplied by black one. WTF? I know cables are not supposed to be disassembled and shit, but why swap the colors?

[momaka]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

But here is a trick: GND is supplied by red wire and +12Vcc is supplied by black one. WTF? I know cables are not supposed to be disassembled and shit, but why swap the colors?

Because the Chinese worker that was assembling this probably needed to pump out more units to meet a certain quota, so he/she was soldering whatever wire color he/she happened to grab first. Or who knows. When dealing with things made this cheap, I try not to "reason" too much with the device.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I got recently a WD Elements SATA 2.5" box.

I thought that it would be some sort of quality item, and I did step on a banana.
Totally plastic box and power hungry, works in my desktop only connected at the rear motherboard USB port.

I have also a cheap aluminum 2.5" pata enclosure, never had issues with USB ports with it.

http://www.ittsb.eu/forum/index.php?topic=673.0

[tmiha71]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

... works in my desktop only connected at the rear motherboard USB port.

Because there's capacitor of 1000uF at +5V rail :-)

Genuine items from e-bay, you're being silly :-))

[Agent24]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

I would advise against cheap USB enclosures from China\eBay etc...

Friend of mine bought two against my advice, one blew up and took out his 640GB HDD and the other went up in smoke 2 days later, sitting there doing nothing without a drive in it.

Still don't know what went wrong, the PSUs test OK on both rails on the bench but both enclosures have the same blown electrolytic capacitor. Very odd!

[lti]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

Do any enclosures (or the "adapters" that plug into a bare drive with no enclosure) have a good power supply? I'm starting to think that the expensive ones are just less crappy.

The 2.5" enclosure I have came from eBay. It was about $4, and it looks like exactly the same thing as the enclosures I see on Newegg for about $12 now. When I bought it, almost every enclosure less than $30 was identical to this one, except that they had a different interface chip. Mine has an Initio INIC-1511L chip.

[Agent24]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

2.5" enclosures are probably fine since they all seem to run from USB so they're only likely to get fried if your motherboard or PSU is junk.

It's the 3.5" cheapies with no-name power bricks I would be worried about (and going by recent events, am very justified!)

I would 'trust' the Seagate and WD ones, friend in question has several of those too, all which are (AFAIK) still working - but you can trust nothing better than multiple backups...

[ratdude747]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

My arctic 2.5" usb3 enclosure is definently not a clone/rebadge of a china model... hell, it has stainless covers (not cheap AL extrusion). Plastics are good. I paid $27 + shipping at the egg for it...

[tmiha71]

Re: Lazy & Cheap External drive manufacturers

Friend of mine bought two against my advice, one blew up and took out his 640GB HDD and the other went up in smoke 2 days later, sitting there doing nothing without a drive in it.

Pictures Please...
What caps were installed ?