Hard Drive Power Supplies

[momaka]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

My friend has one like the GX26W in his repair shop that he used for powering some desktop drives to read data off of them every once in a while. But after many drives refused to spin up with that piece of turd, he started using a crappy $10 Logisys power supply he had on hand. That worked okay for the task until I repaired a nice HiPro unit for him... But yeah, when you have to "upgrade" to a cheap Logisys power supply to make something work, that must mean a lot!

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

Are there any power supplies for hard drive enclosures or IDE/SATA to USB "adapters" that aren't junk?

I think the NewEgg Rosewill brand always includes a UL-approved power supply, some Vantecs do, but probably no Byteccs do. Here's the PSU that came with my Bytecc and some Vantecs. No safety approvals, the 3-prong AC socket has no connection to its ground prong, no line filter, and apparently no protection. Oddly, the little blue disk capacitor that goes between the output side and the high voltage side is Y-rated, unlike the one in the UL approved supply included with my Western Digital USB disks. My first Bytecc supply burned out after about a year (high voltage MOSFET shorted), and Bytecc sent a replacement that was an even cheaper version (but those single diodes in place of the pairs are still Schottkys) , also with no ground prong connection:

[lti]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

Are there any power supplies for hard drive enclosures or IDE/SATA to USB "adapters" that aren't junk?

[kc8adu]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

i just junked a bunch of these.
one was a "flypower"
pack it with shit and let the flies generate the power?
several had no english but the voltages.scary inside!
90-260vac trace 1/8" from 5v to the led!
several were still in sealed bags!
tossed them when i should have loaded them to spec and watched them explode.

[cheapie]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

I have a "Fineness Power" brick (and an identical "Flypower", but I lost that one). It's very similar if not identical to the Yu Feng. Even the label is the same, just with a different brand on it. I would sort of like to know who is actually making these.

[mariushm]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

I wouldn't consider the one on the right a quality product.

The capacitors are practically glued to the to220 rectifiers, the heatsink is barely adequate, transistor/mosfet on the primary side is screwed in the corner of the metal sheet, as if the heat will spread all the way to the other side efficiently . Both have that horrible pcb that has copper on only one side, all through hole. They could have put the bridge rectifier on the heatsink with the transistor/mosfet on the primary side, flip the common mode chock 90 degrees, put the capacitor vertically, and voila.. plenty of space available.

Old designs, low frequency stuff, bad layout...

Sigh.. you can get a VIPER50A for less than 2$ in quantity and put it on a trip of metal on one side and configure it to do 12v 3A or something like that.
Put the schottky diode and a 5.2v (to account for voltage loss on cable) 2A dc-dc converter on the other side on a long strip of metal. Done.
5-6$ for everything but the transformer, which in chine can't be more than 1-2$.

But I guess the parts costs less than 1$ in these shitty power supplies, probably all overstock or parts barely meeting specs.

[goontron]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

Hey, those drives seem to work forever!

got 2 on a RAID card in my main rig. winXP runs pis-poor from them, but with linux i can even watch flash videos.

[shovenose]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

just plug that into a quantum bigfoot, it will blow that thing sky high!

Hey, those drives seem to work forever!

[goontron]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

just plug that noname into a quantum bigfoot, it will blow that thing sky high!

[shovenose]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

This is a great post.

You would be surprised how many poeople buy nice high end Seasonic, Corsair, etc. PSUs then use shitty external enclosures or docks!

[budm]

Re: Hard Drive Power Supplies

The two rectifier diodes in TO-220 case mounted on the U shape heat sink of the Yu Feng are Common Cathode rectifier diodes for 5V winding and 12V winding of the transformer, sure looks like better built.

[mockingbird]

You know you've used them at least once or twice in the past... The quick and dirty way to power up an HDD by using one of those cheap Chinese switching brick adapters that may have come as part of an IDE to USB kit...

Here is an amateur examination of two different Chinese adapters. First we have the "GX26W-5-12", a very common model that comes with the aforementioned kits:



Next is the "Yu Feng" JYCC-168:


Both very similar in advertised spec, aside from the slight difference in the amperes rating.



On the right we have the Yu Feng, on the left, the GX26W. This picture speaks for itself (Sorry about the lighting, I really ought to get a decent lamp for this sort of thing instead of trying to aim a flashlight while taking the photo). The Yu Feng has excellent input protection (X cap, Y-Cap, choke, high quality fuse). The secondary is a world ahead of the no name brand adapter. Compare the following: Tiny transformer, cost cutting 4 diode rectification, cheap glass fuse, and lack of coils for the filtering caps.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the two diodes in its secondary are being used to inexpensively step down the voltage to 12V and 5V, whereas the Yu Feng has two actual full fledged seperate transistors on the secondary heatsink (One is YG902, other's markings are obstructed by caps). The transistor attached to the side heatsink says "STK" on it, which I assume is a Sanken part (Can't make out the rest, which is blocked by the transformer).

In case you're wondering, the lone transistor attached partially to the tiny "heatsink" on the GX26W is a Fairchild 2N60.

The cheap adapter's wires are much flimsier and skinnier than the Yu Feng, and its cord lacks a ferrite core. When it's plugged in the wall, the AM radio gets a lot of static.

The only complaints I have with the Yu Feng are the quality of the caps (Nicon for the primary, and "SWCON" for the rest), and the fact that since this came from an old USB2 external enclosure, it's not a molex connector (Which means I'll have to do some splicing).

Lesson learned: Don't blindly use cheap Chinese adapters, the can destroy your equipment, but at the same time, don't discount all Chinese products as junk, the manufacturers can produce high quality products if they want to, but even then, crack it open and change the caps to make sure it lasts forever.