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General discussion

powering external hard drive with only one usb

Jul 1, 2006 12:51PM PDT

i just upgraded the hard drive in my laptop and bought an external enclosure for the old drive. it can be powered by either two usb connections or an ac adapter. however, my laptop only has one usb port, and i dont want to have to be tethered to a wall in order to use the external drive. can i use a usb hub? if not, are there other ports i can modify connections for in order to get power from them? here's what else my computer has: headphone, microphone, pcmcia (Occupied by wireless card), proprietary docking port, modem, ethernet, vga, serial, ir, and the dell module bay port. do any of these cary the same voltage as usb? if so, i could hack together a connector of my own to use its power. any other ideas?

Discussion is locked

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Doesn't work.
Jul 2, 2006 12:14AM PDT

Sorry. But the first USB port has only so much power and you've lost some in the hub.

Your risk to try the next idea. Go find the PS2 keyboard to USB adapter and plug the power USB connection to that. Do not mistakenly plug the USB connection to that.

Bob

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that won't work either
Jul 2, 2006 3:09AM PDT

my laptop, sadly, does not have a ps2 port. however, i just found out that it works with just the main usb plugged in and the aux power connector isnt needed. reading the external enclosure manual, it seems to imply that only some hard drives require the extra power of the secondary connection, and my new fujitsu 80gb notebook drive is efficient enough to run on that low power. and as a note, the hard drive is running under full load (norton ghost is cloning the old hard drive onto the usb one and has been working successfully for the past 3 hours.