# Sata to USB circuit board not working



## Draconas (Apr 21, 2012)

So I had a WD my book essentials enclosure, the drive died and I disassembled the enclosure for parts, the Sata to USB board looked useful







I recently removed my old laptop HDD to do some health and capabilities testing (after having it for so long)






 but I had it plugged directly to my desktop, when I got done with it, I closed every program and folder that was using it, removed the sata data connector, everything was fine, I removed the sata power from it, and my PSU ended up hiccuping and lost power, didn't want to do that again, I dug out this little board to try and use it, and to no surprise at all, it won't work for some reason.






Power LED is on when plugged in, and goes to an idle state when the USB connection is removed, the drive powers and spins up, and I hear the arm ticking for a second... but nothing happens, no new drive detected, system manager doesn't see a blank drive (shouldn't be blank to begin with), no indication that it's communicating.

So I restart windows, OS boots up, USB storage functionality in the mobo starts and one other USB drive starts fine, but the one im working on, still doesn't, and I think I found why.






Obviously it isn't a WD drive installed, the board's encryption functionality was turned off beforehand, and I thought the board would have at least some generic drivers to work, but apparently don't.

So what else can I do with any of this? I do not want to plug the drive back into my board at all after what it did the first time.


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## Mxpklx (Apr 21, 2012)

I think the power source for the USB is too low... maybe?


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## Elim Garak (Apr 21, 2012)

Board or HDD is fucked. Seeing it messed with your PSU when you removed it, something on the drive is messing with power. If the HDD is the fault you can't really repair it. The USB board can't handle the power problems I believe. You can either try with another USB board(They are cheap as fuck at times) or hook the HDD to some old pc that has sata and you don't use.
Also the USB board is externally powered, so its pulling at least the amount the USB needs, if it needs to pull more then that the board or HDD is fubar.
Like I said, I think it's the HDD.
Oh by the way, I know SATA is hotpluggable but I don't recommend disconnecting devices when the PSU is on. It generally doesn't give issues, but I have seen it happen. USB doesn't matter ofc.


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## Draconas (Apr 21, 2012)

Mxpklx said:


> I think the power source for the USB is too low... maybe?



If it can power a 2.5 inch HDD, it sure as hell can power a little baby laptop HDD o.o


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## AshleyAshes (Apr 21, 2012)

Draconas said:


> If it can power a 2.5 inch HDD, it sure as hell can power a little baby laptop HDD o.o



'2.5"' and 'Laptop HDDs' are the same thing...

And actually, depending on the USB port, there's not necessarily enough power directly power a 2.5 USB HDD.  Sometimes you need power from two USB ports (And if both ports share the same controller, there still could not be enough power because the controller could be giving power to other USB ports).  Someone came to my apartment with a HDD that was powered only by USB ports, it wouldn't work in any USB ports except my pair of USB 3.0 ports, which are controlled by a dedicated USB 3.0 controller, it's not shared with anything else.

The HDD itself could also just be dead.

Or maybe you damaged the controller board when you disassembled the enclosure.

The first thing you should do is plug the HDD directly into a real PC, that will determine if it's the HDD or the controller from the enclosure.


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## Draconas (Apr 21, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> '2.5"' and 'Laptop HDDs' are the same thing...
> 
> And actually, depending on the USB port, there's not necessarily enough power directly power a 2.5 USB HDD.  Sometimes you need power from two USB ports (And if both ports share the same controller, there still could not be enough power because the controller could be giving power to other USB ports).  Someone came to my apartment with a HDD that was powered only by USB ports, it wouldn't work in any USB ports except my pair of USB 3.0 ports, which are controlled by a dedicated USB 3.0 controller, it's not shared with anything else.
> 
> ...



It's AC powered, and I know the drive isn't dead since "but I had it plugged directly to my desktop, when I got done with it, I closed every program and folder that was using it, removed the sata data connector, everything was fine, I removed the sata power from it, and my PSU ended up hiccuping and lost power, didn't want to do that again, I dug out this little board to try and use it, and to no surprise at all, it won't work for some reason."

I'm betting on 3 things on this one. The board is dead(unlikely if it's powering on and it's carrying out some routines). The drivers were on the hidden HDD partition on the original HDD. Or since the drive im attempting to use is a hitachi drive, trying to work on a WD circuit board.


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## Elim Garak (Apr 22, 2012)

I am pretty sure it uses the default Windows drivers seeing that people use shit like gparted at times to repartion it.


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## David23Kipp (Aug 25, 2012)

I agree with you that '2.5"' and 'Laptop HDDs' are the same thing.


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## kayfox (Aug 25, 2012)

I just want to toss a couple things in here:

1. The SATA to USB board has a power jack, this implies that it came with a power adapter.  Maybe it needs the power adapter for this drive?
2. The drive enclosures made to be powered entirely off USB usually only work with very specific drives, as not all drives consume the same amount of power.
3. Sometimes these kinda enclosures work on some USB controllers but not others.  This is because some manufacturers omit the current limiting circuitry from their designs and the USB port will happily deliver power right up to the point of excessive smoke emission/magic smoke release.  The USB 2.0 specification limits the maximum single port power output to 500mA, this also means if you have an unpowered hub you can only count on a fraction of that.
4. Some USB - SATA adapters are locked to a particular drive manufacturer for many reasons including, but not limited to: a) The enclosure does special things and the drive needs to support them, b) preventing "counterfeit" product (where working drive enclosures are pilfered from the assembly line or the refurb facility and cheap drives are placed in them and sold).
5. The drive is expecting 12v or 3.3v power and the enclosure does not provide it (see: bitchy SAS drives).


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## Runefox (Aug 25, 2012)

Seems to me there's a layer between the drive and the OS with that USB to SATA bridge that's messing things up. The bridge looks like it's specifically designed with a specific drive / drive layout in mind, which is pretty obvious by the WD Virtual CD device listing on that screen. Not only that, but the board itself might have been what fried your drive to begin with - Not uncommon for external drives to have bad SATA bridges.


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## Draconas (Sep 1, 2012)

Runefox said:


> Seems to me there's a layer between the drive and the OS with that USB to SATA bridge that's messing things up. The bridge looks like it's specifically designed with a specific drive / drive layout in mind, which is pretty obvious by the WD Virtual CD device listing on that screen. Not only that, but the board itself might have been what fried your drive to begin with - Not uncommon for external drives to have bad SATA bridges.



The enclosure that board came from was for a WD desktop HDD (not from the board itself), that drive has since died and the board just sat there, I put in a laptop hitachi drive and it spun up so power wasn't an issue, I think it was just for a specific drive, also that same hitachi drive worked when I threw it onto another interface thing that was laying around.


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## Koda (Sep 10, 2012)

Change the AC Power adapter. If you're powering a 7200RPM drive, you should be running with no less than 1 amp (1000mA). A lot of these things ship with 500-800mA power supplies, but they just don't seem to cut it.

Before you go plugging any old adapter into it though, double check the voltage and polarity are the same. The icon for DC voltage is a horizontal bar, with a dashed bar under it. The icon for polarity looks kind of like a chain link, with a + and - pointing to the outside and inside of a circle representing the plug. Amps are usually given, but you could do a calculation if it only gives you watts and volts. I*V=W, so Amps=Watts/Volts. The big HDD enclosures are usually 12V, so you could find an adapter for a portable TV, answering machine phones, oooold camcorders, TV antenna boosters, lot's of stuff. I have a portable peltier fridge that has a 12V circular plug (and like psychotic 2-3 amp current rating).

I've seen a lot of these enclosures 'die', when in fact, the user just fried their power supply. Common culprits are a drive which wont quite spin up right (you hear it rev, then slow, rev then slow), ticking sounds, or it wont be recognized by USB. Heck, it might even be putting low voltage AC into the board. If you have a multimeter, that's pretty easy to check.

And, of course, the board could just be well, boned.

~Edit; oops. Just noticed he was b&. Oh well.


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