770 Posts

May 4th, 2005 18:00

Yes.  I have a cheap, generic enclosure I purchased at CompUSA for about $20,  I then put an Hitachi 80GB 4200 RPM drive into it,  and use a 12 inch USB cable.  With that setup,  I have been able to power that drive off the USB bus with no problems.

If I could have found a longer cable with a larger gauge wire for the power pair within the USB,  I could have gone that route,  but the problem I was encountering was that I was getting too much impedence from the cable length and therefore too much power loss between the port and the device.

One more note,  I also fond that the FireLite USB2 drive series (available at Best Buy) have a very low power consumption.  I took one of those drives and was able to run it with a 6 foot cable on my system with no problems,  and with a 3 foot cable on a co-worker's Inspiron 5100 system.

1 Message

May 6th, 2005 15:00

Thanks for the advice.
 
Could you in detail tell me what
 
"cheap, generic enclosure I purchased at CompUSA for about $20" is?

770 Posts

May 6th, 2005 18:00

Well,  it is just a small 2.5" hard drive external enclosure with a USB 2.0 interface.  Here is a like to a similar item: http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=317156&pfp=SEARCH
 
The enclosure I bought was the same price,  and was CompUSA branded,  like the one in this link, except mine didn't come with the "one touch backup" button and software,  it was just an exteranl enclosure.
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