Quick PC electronics question

Factual Questions
1

(that’ll take a minute to explain.)
I have ordered an assembly online – it’s to hook up an IDE drive externally (to my PC) – no box, just cables.

There is a cable that has an IDE-drive plug (female) on one end, and a USB on the other end. That’s for data.

There is another cable, for power, that is in two parts. One half has a standard male three-prong plug that goes into the wall outllet. On the other end of this half is a female three-prong plug.

The other half of this power cable has the transformer box on one end, with the male three-prong that the other half plugs into. And on the other end of this half is a four-pin female plug, that plugs into the four-pin male on the back of the IDE drive.

It is this fourth plug-end that I am asking about. I’m sure they have a proper name, but I don’t know what it is, so I’ll call them “sockets,” you know, the four holes the pins plug into. The holes themselves are each lined with a yellow metal cylindrical contact, right?

Because, when my eagerly-awaited assembly arrived, the plug-end in question only had contacts in three out of the four holes.

So I had to request permission to return it, pay for shipping to send it back, order a new one and pay for shipping on that, while waiting for a refund of the original purchase.

The second one was delivered today, and guess what? Same thing. Aaargh.

I looked at the plugs coming out of a standard PC power supply, just to make sure. All four holes have a contact on those.

Buuuut, just to make sure I’m not, uh, talking out of my hat … is there any way it’s supposed to be like that?
(I did try hooking up the first one – it didn’t work. No power.)

2

<pedant>I assume you mean PATA, as IDE has been dead-and-buried for years now.</pedant>

Do you mean the 4-pin Molex connector that plugs into the drive? The pins on that are +12V / gnd / gnd / +5V. It is possible to omit one of the two ground wires (black). Some drives will run on 5V only, needing only 2 power wires, but that’s unusual except for notebook drives (which have the power connection in the data connector, anyway).

I think pictures are required, and (if you can) a link to the item wherever you bought it.

3

assuming the plug is missing one of the two center wires, it’ll probably work fine. Both are ground wires; on the hard drive’s circuit board they’re generally tied together so if one isn’t there it’s no big deal.

4

Yes, it is a 4-pin Molex connector, “female pins with male housing.” If you look at the four holes which constitute the four female pins on this plug end, 3 of the holes have a gold-colored contact inside. One of the holes (one of the two inner holes) is just black plastic. As you point out, the two inner pins are grounds … does this mean that it’s possible that this is normal for this particular instance of this plug?

The Molex connector is on a cable which is one-piece, just black. So you can’t see which wires go to what.

Purchase page linky.

5

God, I type slow … thank you,** jz78817. **

6

That’s an odd assortment of parts. It looks like the output from the transformer is a SATA power cable and you then use the SATA-to-Molex adapter cable to connect it to the drive.

7

I was a bit confused at first too … actually, it’s the other way round. It’s a Molex that comes out of the transformer, the Molex-to-SATA is so it will work on a SATA drive.

The Molex coming out of the transformer is sleek and black and, at first glance, doesn’t look like it’ll fit. It does, though.

So I hooked it up, and now I’ve got a red light on the PATA plug-end; computer doesn’t detect anything.

8

You mean on the adapter cable (with the USB connector on the other end)? Did you get a manual with this thing that says what the light means?

How did you get the behavior to change from “nothing happens” to “red light”?

If your computer is running (and has a working sound card hooked up to speakers), what happens when you plug the USB cable in? Does the computer play a sound (if so, describe it), and/or display a message? [I’m assuming a recent Windows here, if not, please specify.]

Does the light come on with the drive disconnected, when you plug the cable into a USB port? In other words, what is triggering the light - the drive or the USB connection.

9

I have gone through more than one of these cheap adapters, with the symptoms the OP describes. The fault has always been with the USB adapter. The drive should spin up when it is plugged in to power even without a data cable attached. You can also vrify by opening the computer and using a free power connector from your power supply, but it’s unlikely to be the power brick.

10

Nawp, no manual. Not a vague whispered rumor of a fractured-English farce of a manual. Not even a terse, “Good luck.” I guess at that price, you’re on your own.

Yes, the USB-to-PATA cable has a red light which comes on when (with the USB end plugged into PC) that cable is plugged into the drive, and of course turns off when I pull it out. It stays on if I unplug the power cable from the drive. What disturbs me is that the light is red, universal engineer-speak for “something amiss.” Offhand, I can’t think of any device in my world that has a red light when all is well.

Damn, I have gone through three external drive bays, and now two of these. One of the bays worked for quite awhile. I’ve got a whole stack of PATA drives that have become a PITA at some point and been replaced by an expedient random drive on hand, and they’re all waiting for resuscitation so their life’s wo0rk won’t be lost. Alas.

11

I have one of those adapters (prolly not the exact same model, but it certainly sounds like what I have) and the molex connector also has only 3 contacts. And it is works just fine as I’m writing this.

After much headache and experimentation I’ve discovered the following connection procedure to work the most reliably:
[ol]
[li] Ensure usb cable is not connected to computer (it can be connected to the drive, or to the computer, just not both at the same time yet. )[/li][li] Connect power cable to the drive[/li][li] wait 3-5 seconds[/li][li] connect usb cable to the computer (both ends should now be connected)[/li][li] If necessary go to Drive manager (start > run > diskmgmt.msc) and format, partition, or change the drive letter as needed.[/li][/ol]

12

I use those adaptors all the time and they work fine except I have had a couple power supplies fail and repaired them myself. I use them often as I have quite a few old IDE disks which I use for backups.

Both central pins of the Molex connector are connected to the same ground and the thing will work with just one although two would be better as they would share the current load.

I connect the data cable to the IDE or PATA disk first. Then I power up the hard disk and lastly I connect the USB to the computer. Never had a problem.

I am not sure what instructions would be needed. I guess my instructions would be: Plug the data and power connectors into the disk, plug the power connector into a wall socket, plug the USB connector into the computer. It seems pretty obvious to me.

Even though they have a PATA adaptor I do not use them for PATA disks because those I just plug directly into the motherboard. I guess the adaptor would be useful if you do not want to open the case or you are using a laptop.