Hi one and all

I have four hard disks and two cd/dvd's all on usb's on my desktop. This saves me the bother of crawling under the desk where the PC is.
Everything works with no great problems however I would like to mod the power supply. At present I have six voltage converters using six separate plugs. This lot also gets quite hot.
I have a spare PSU and was wondering if I could use this to power the four hard disks????
I estimate that each hard drive will use 0.5a of the 5v supply and 1.0a of the 12v. This will total 2.0amps of 5volt and 4.0amps of 12volt; my old 250w P.S.U.knocks out 25 at 5 and 10 at 12 which should cover the demand even during spin up.

Its the cables I'm wondering about, there are two types of plug. On two of the HD's there are four pins, pretty simple...1x5v,1x12v and 2x ground.
It's on the other HD power plugs, these have six pins??? They look very similar to a PS2 mouse plug.

Why the two extra pins?
Any help, thoughts, comments or advice would be appreciated.
Lionel

what brand and model is the different one?

Hi Surfer
Thanks for taking an interest.
In fact the two disks that have 4 pins are multi media disks a Storex 320g and a QPS 300g;
The other two are disks that 'I made', that is to say I purchased two empty hard disk cases and
stuck in a couple of spare disks (80g and 200g).
The case name (I'm looking at it now) is "Xerom K-3503A"

I've just tried a PS2 mouse in it and it fits dead on. If you look at a PS2 mouse plug you'll see exactly what I mean. This is plug (plus cable) that needs to be connected to the PSU.

The 4 pin plug looks like this :: Top left is 5v, top right is 12v and the two at the bottom are grounds.

The 6 pin plug looks like this : .. : There are several combinations possible. Two pins left 5v, Two pins
right 12v and one each (at the bottom) for the grounds. Or it could be one pin each for the current and two
pins each for the grounds?. Maybe they just use four of the six pins????.

I want to use (if possible) a couple of old mice cables as this will avoid cutting up the original cables that are in fact connected directly into the current converters.

Lionel

i have no idea how the connector is powered. i guess a little sleuthing with a multimeter would tell. too bad there's not a schematic.

I came to the same conclusion; since writing the last post I've been "sleuthing".
I'm not the best in the world with a multimeter so I have no concrete results, what with the probes slipping, touching more than one contact at the same time ect ect.
Did make some progress though; I cut open both the mouse cable and the original power cable ,both have the same 6 pin PS2 type plug. The mouse has only 5 wires all much to small to carry the required voltage, so that idea is out the window.
So I chopped into the original power cable....4 wire all substantially thicker. But I still don't know the pinout.
Tomorrow I will rig up the old schoolboy stand by....6 volt battery and a torch bulb wired into two sewing needles, that should tell me what wire is connected to what pin.....maybe!
I'll keep you posted if you like.

Lionel

I recently went through this for a little enclosure for slaving drives to my main for scanning. My good one blew up and I had to try this on short notice. What a nightmare trying to come up with a power supply for the stupid thing. Voltage was right, amperage was wrong....voltage was wrong , amps were right,. After a while I was so frustrated I gave up and tossed it, with force, against the ground. Argh!:pull hair:

I ended up ordering 3 of 'em, with support for both IDE and SATA. Thank goodness they're inexpensive.

Just wanted you to know I share your pain.

6 pin power look like this?

An adapter can be found here. If you want to do a search on Google, use AC Power Adapter for External Hard Drive & Enclosure - 6-Pin as a keyword.

Hi Interceptor

What a life-saver... this is exactly the plug I have, thanks for your most excellent post.
I will check tomorrow to confirm, the wire colours are different from that of the PSU but it will be so much easier now I know what I'm looking for.

With this last problem practically solved the final plan has three parts something like this.

1) Splice into pin 14 and 15 on the ATX power connector (the 20 pin block connecting the internal PSU to the mother boardl) and run two wires back to simple sockets that I shall mount on the back of the case.

2)The ATX power connector on the external PSU will be removed and all the wires (except the 14 green & 15 black ) taped off out of the way. The two wires remaining will need to be extended say about a meter and finish with two pins ready to plug into the back of the PC. This I hope will create a master/slave configuration which will duel boot both PSU's when the computer is turned on. The molex connectors will be removed and the wires run into simple 4 pin sockets.

3) Four of our problem plugs can now be wired into separate plugs ready to connect the hard drives to the external slave PSU unit.

What a lot of frustrating problems for what I thought was a simple plan

Thankyou both Surfer and Interceptor. I'll update this post as I progress.

Lionel