HDD no longer recognized.

[Peter Jason]

Win 7 SP1

I disconnected a 500GB HDD (F drive) to take its
cable to the computer shop to buy a similar one.

When connecting up again, the HDD does not show up
in Win Explorer, Device Manager, or Disk
Management.

Rebooting usually fixes this, but not this time!

 

[Peter Jason]

It's just reconnected itself. Weird.

 

[Paul]

It's just reconnected itself. Weird.

OK, is it a USB drive ?

I wish these things had a monitor LED for
the +5V power rail, as seen at the drive end...

It would make answering this question a whole
lot easier.

When the resettable Polyfuse opens, it takes
a couple minutes for it to re-crystallize and
start conducting again, when the overload goes away.
If the USB hard drive does not respond the first
time, disconnect it, wait two minutes, then plug it
in and try again.

If the problem persists, use a hydra cable with two USB
on one end of the cable. The flavor of hydra to use,
depends on whether your USB drive enclosure has a barrel
power connector input or not. Using a hydra cable, is
intended to bypass this "shortage of power" issue.
The drive is only short of power for the first
ten seconds of operation. If it manages to spin up
and not blow the Polyfuse, then it'll continue
to stay running. As the startup current is 1 ampere,
and the steady current is around 0.25 ampere or so.
The current drops after it starts up successfully,
and the fuse can cool off a bit.

The Polyfuse resets itself - there is no "cartridge" to
change or replace. Polyfuses are normally pretty good, in terms
of not blowing out forever. Let them cool off for two
minutes, then try them again. Simply removing the
USB connector, is sufficient to allow them to cool off.
There is no need to shut off the computer to encourage
cooling. Just remove the electrical load on the port.

Your motherboard has Polyfuses on:

1) PS/2 mouse and keyboard connector
2) Parallel port connector
3) USB2 and USB3 ports (different sized fuse for each)

The cooling fans are not fused.

The PC beep speaker is not fused. Pinching the +5V wire
of the PC beep speaker, until it shorts against the chassis
ground, causes the speaker wire to glow red-hot Asking the
question, what were those engineers thinking Of course
pinching the wire is a dumb thing to do, but still, the
user must be protected from such.

Paul

 

[Peter Jason]

On Sat, 29 Mar 2014 01:26:53 -0400, Paul
Thanks,
Actually it's a HDD on a cable like this:
http://www.warcom.com.au/shop_image/product/black-e-sataii-cable-for-25quot-hdd-pw-sata.jpg
I wanted another cable for another HDD but the
shop hadn't heard of this sort. I've gone back to
the wholesaler and await results.
Peter.

 

[Paul]

On Sat, 29 Mar 2014 01:26:53 -0400, Paul
Thanks,
Actually it's a HDD on a cable like this:
http://www.warcom.com.au/shop_image/product/black-e-sataii-cable-for-25quot-hdd-pw-sata.jpg
I wanted another cable for another HDD but the
shop hadn't heard of this sort. I've gone back to
the wholesaler and await results.
Peter.

OK, so it's not USB.

I traced your picture here. Product is "made" by Lian Li.

http://www.warcom.com.au/products/54853_lian-li-e-sataii-cable-for-25-hdd---black

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pw-sata/

One picture on that page, shows it plugging into a BZ-S01

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/bz-s01/

The BZ-S01 has an eSATAp connector on the front. The connector
is upside-down when compared to some other documentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATAp

The pinout used, could be the third connector down.
But as Lian Li is not an electronics firm, bangs out
aluminum boxes for a living, Lian Li doesn't know
how to document electronics in a way usable by
enthusiasts. Their electronic products would be contract
manufactured. Anyone who *does* design their own electronics,
is proud of what they do, and documents them. So we're left
to guess as to what we're buying.

This page shows what the connector might have on it.

http://www.addonics.com/technologies/euhp.php

The connector is divided into four sections. Originally,
the ESATA connector had just the 7 SATA pins. Someone
thought it would be cool, to add a couple extra pins
to carry power. I call these "Power_Ears" because they
sit off to the side, in an attempt to not interfere
with regular cabling (short to shield). One issue with
the Power_Ear idea, was the Power_Ears were providing +5V
on laptop computers, and +12V on desktops, and weren't exactly
interchangeable. I couldn't figure out how a user would
stay out of trouble with this screwed up implementation.

Now, we go forward further in time, they've added USB
pins to the connector. So the connector can be used for
eSATA, eSATAp, and USB.

7SATA
Power_Ear Power_Ear
4USB

The Addonics notation of "VBUS", implies this is
a 5V only connector, with two pins that can carry
+5V for a 2.5" drive. This would be a pretty useless
connector (as drawn) for a 3.5" drive, because no +12V
power is shown. Maybe there's yet another variation
for that purpose ?


GND A+ A- GND B- B+ GND
GND VBUS
VBUS D- D+ GND

In any case, now the fun part becomes, figuring out
what all these (undocumented) boxes and cables
are doing with the signals. I would need to be Kreskin
to make headway, guessing at which VBUS pin is, or is
not wired up. Maybe the cable sucks power from one of
the pins, sucks it from two of the pins. How would we know ?
Short of getting out the multimeter, and probing the voltage
as it comes into the 2.5" disk drive PCB ?

The available documentation of the connector, does not
suggest it is an acknowledged standard. It still seems
to be a "bastardized good idea <tm>".

Forget about the Y-shaped cable, because that one
is for a USB enclosure. Your setup is some obscure
ESATA thing.

Maybe someone else here has embraced this stuff, and
knows what the defacto operating scheme is. I would have
to treat it as a reverse engineering project.

Paul

 

[Peter Jason]

OK, so it's not USB.

I traced your picture here. Product is "made" by Lian Li.

http://www.warcom.com.au/products/54853_lian-li-e-sataii-cable-for-25-hdd---black

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pw-sata/

One picture on that page, shows it plugging into a BZ-S01

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/bz-s01/

The BZ-S01 has an eSATAp connector on the front. The connector
is upside-down when compared to some other documentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATAp

The pinout used, could be the third connector down.
But as Lian Li is not an electronics firm, bangs out
aluminum boxes for a living, Lian Li doesn't know
how to document electronics in a way usable by
enthusiasts. Their electronic products would be contract
manufactured. Anyone who *does* design their own electronics,
is proud of what they do, and documents them. So we're left
to guess as to what we're buying.

This page shows what the connector might have on it.

http://www.addonics.com/technologies/euhp.php

The connector is divided into four sections. Originally,
the ESATA connector had just the 7 SATA pins. Someone
thought it would be cool, to add a couple extra pins
to carry power. I call these "Power_Ears" because they
sit off to the side, in an attempt to not interfere
with regular cabling (short to shield). One issue with
the Power_Ear idea, was the Power_Ears were providing +5V
on laptop computers, and +12V on desktops, and weren't exactly
interchangeable. I couldn't figure out how a user would
stay out of trouble with this screwed up implementation.

Now, we go forward further in time, they've added USB
pins to the connector. So the connector can be used for
eSATA, eSATAp, and USB.

7SATA
Power_Ear Power_Ear
4USB

The Addonics notation of "VBUS", implies this is
a 5V only connector, with two pins that can carry
+5V for a 2.5" drive. This would be a pretty useless
connector (as drawn) for a 3.5" drive, because no +12V
power is shown. Maybe there's yet another variation
for that purpose ?


GND A+ A- GND B- B+ GND
GND VBUS
VBUS D- D+ GND

In any case, now the fun part becomes, figuring out
what all these (undocumented) boxes and cables
are doing with the signals. I would need to be Kreskin
to make headway, guessing at which VBUS pin is, or is
not wired up. Maybe the cable sucks power from one of
the pins, sucks it from two of the pins. How would we know ?
Short of getting out the multimeter, and probing the voltage
as it comes into the 2.5" disk drive PCB ?

The available documentation of the connector, does not
suggest it is an acknowledged standard. It still seems
to be a "bastardized good idea <tm>".

Forget about the Y-shaped cable, because that one
is for a USB enclosure. Your setup is some obscure
ESATA thing.

Maybe someone else here has embraced this stuff, and
knows what the defacto operating scheme is. I would have
to treat it as a reverse engineering project.

Paul

Heavens! Is there no way to safely connect an
external SSD to the computer via a 1 meter cable?

 

[philo]

Heavens! Is there no way to safely connect an
external SSD to the computer via a 1 meter cable?

The most reliable way would be to use a self-powered enclosure

 

[Peter Jason]

The most reliable way would be to use a self-powered enclosure

Thanks, I bought one of these....
http://computerurban.com/image/cach...rnal Enclosure 2.5 USB 3.0 (Red)2-500x500.jpg
but the cable is rather short, about one foot.
Also, do you know what the little square bit of
magnetic rubber in the polythene bag is?
Peter