I’ve done some looking around, and the answer seems to be yes, but I’m pretty sure the cables I have predate SSDs, so I’m worried if I try to use them to power a SSD I might fry the thing.
A SSD designed to replace a hard drive IS SATA, so all the cables are compatible.
The main issue is USB connector type. Your SSD might have a (wide) Micro-B SuperSpeed connector. While you could use a (narrow) USB-B cable, the speeds are going to be a lot lower. Sort of pointless for a SSD.
I wouldn’t really care about speed unless it ended up being a huge speed loss compared to a regular SATA. I just want the stability of an SSD.
If speed doesn’t matter, then you will be absolutely fine as long as the USB cable fits.
You may be sacrificing an order of magnitude in speeds, but if this is very small or very infrequently accessed files, it hardly matters.
If you can fit a drive cable onto a drive without excessive force, it’s not going to damage the drive to run power through the cable. Those interfaces are highly standardized, and the cables are made so that you can’t connect the wrong cable accidentally. SSDs use the same power and interface as regular SATA drives, so either it fits and works or just doesn’t fit.
Thanks, folks!