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Suffering over USB

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Jimdoria:
Wow, lots of great feedback. Sorry it took me a while to get back here.

Just some clarification re drive type and power. First of all it is an ATA drive. Haven't made the jump to SATA on any of my machines yet. I go for OLD iron  ;)

Second, regarding power, I knew this was an issue. Actually, I've never been able to run this drive on USB power alone. The enclosure came with an external power adapter that also plugs into a USB port (like the 2nd one you mention, Darwin - USB plug to round hole on the enclosure.) For a while I could only get good results if the drive's power adapter was plugged into the USB hub of a desktop machine.

Clearly, this is a problem when running a portable setup, so I actually hacked together an external power adapter for the enclosure. I took an AC adapter that puts out 5V and is rated for 3.0A and wired it up to an old USB extender cable. Now I've got a portable USB power supply that should be able to dish out enough power for any USB peripheral, and I use this to power the drive prior to plugging it in to the laptop.

(For the curious, I commute mostly by train, and there are always at least 1 or 2 seats that are near an AC outlet. So I can use AC while commuting. Otherwise I'd have given up on this plan long ago.)

I've been considering replacing this drive with one designed for this purpose like the Maxtor OneTouch Mini, and it's not THAT expensive a solution, but even so, the budget's not there for it yet, and I'm not sure when it will be. Plus, I feel like I'm SO CLOSE to getting this setup to work that it's become something of a personal obsession.  :-[

ChalkTrauma, I've seen UVCView.exe mentioned elsewhere, but haven't tried it yet. What does it do? I remember there used to be a USBView app for Windows 98 that would report on certain USB info, but I haven't tracked it down yet to even see if it will work on XP.

Thanks for the input everybody!

Darwin:
Jim - given the description you've provided of the USB enclosure and how it deals with power supply, I'd swap enclosures. Your description sounds eerily reminiscent of the enclosure I have my SATA drive in... I think I may take my own advice on this one because the SATA drive, as things stand, is pretty much useless to me.

Grorgy:
I use a little wellend sunbright 2.5" enclosure with a 160 gb hard disk in it.  So long as i plug it into one of the ports on the laptop itself i have no problem with it not working, was very easy to put together too, even for someone like me who has to think about which end of a screw driver to use  ;D   :-[  The enclosure does have a hole in it for a 5v power supply, but it is not supplied with one and the instructions suggest that for most people it wont be necessary.

wreckedcarzz:
I have been pretty impressed with the eGo, it has a d/c in, but I never have used it; but it also has a USB cable that has two connectors on one end, and if the power output of the one port is not enough you can plug the 2nd one in for more juice, I have never had to do that I just thought it was good thinking to include it  :Thmbsup:
-ChalkTrauma (January 18, 2008, 08:55 PM)
--- End quote ---

My Maxtor OneTouch III 80GB USB hard drive has this same setup, but recently I now have to use both connectors to get it working (otherwise it beeps; it is more convenient I guess). Don't know why, used to run fine with just one (added data maybe...?)

Jimdoria:
Ok, thanks for the reccommendations.

If I'm going to shell out money for this project (and it's looking more and more like I'll have to) I'll probably just bite the bullet and buy an all-in-one external drive instead of an enclosure. It's more money, but I'd rather spend more on a sure thing than less on a solution that still may not work.

Now, which one to buy? My first impluse was the Maxtor OneTouch 4 mini, but there's a Cavalry drive with built in SATA, just in case. Hmmm....

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