HELP: External 250G USB screwed with GParted

[Lamar Owen]

On Monday 21 January 2008, Craig White wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 15:22 -0500, Lamar Owen wrote:
> > My own experience
> > trying to use another cable, one that was the same length but had been
> > supplied with a USB multi-card reader (SanDisk branded), indicated that
> > this was in fact true, as the PassPort did not spin up with the SanDisk
> > USB 2.0 cable, but would with the supplied WD cable.

> ----
> the cable that they suggested not to use was a specific type of cable
> that doesn't use normal shielding.

> But thanks...you did find a cable that didn't work properly. What do you
> suppose was the problem with the cable that didn't work properly?

Wire too small internally.  The 80GB PassPort I have shipped with a cable that 
has a single A plug on the computer side; most of the external USB drive's 
I've seen have two (including my new Seagate FreeAgentGo 160GB that I'm using 
now instead of the dead slow WD).  All the USB 2.5 inch adapters that I'm 
aware of are intelligent ones, and check the power capacity of the port prior 
to spinning up the drive (the way to real data corruption is dropping power 
while the drive is spinning up, which is exactly what would happen if the 
cable's wire size is too small).  This includes a couple of inexpensive 2.5 
inch USB enclosures I bought a while back for data recovery purposes.

Also, I have a USB to ATA dongle adapter for data recovery purposes; you've 
probably seen the kind I'm talking about, that has three interfaces on it: 
3.5 inch PATA 40 pin connector; 2.5 inch PATA 44 pin connector, and a SATA 
connector.  it came with a power supply that powers most 3.5 inch PATA and 
SATA drives (not all; in their wisdom, the power supply manufacturer didn't 
provide both ground pins on the molded Molex drive connector; I have found a 
few drives that won't spin up without both ground pins being present....).

The dongle can power a 2.5 inch drive without the external power supply; 
unless the drive's power needs are too great, in which case the drive doesn't 
even attempt to spin up.  This is an aggravation; I had two 60GB drives, one 
a 7200RPM unit, and one a 4200 RPM unit, made by the same manufacturer; the 
4200RPM unit is spun by this dongle just fine, but the 7200RPM unit is not.  
In fact, I bought the 2.5 inch enclosure I mentioned above because it had the 
dual-A to single mini-B cable, and it powers the 7200RPM drive just fine.
-- 
Lamar Owen
www.pari.edu