Are there two different specificatins for A male to A Male Mini 5 Pin USB cables ?

ronbarak · 17-01-2011, 18:36

Hi,

Recently, I bought a USB 2.0 480Mbps cable A male to A Male Mini 5 Pin, to connect an external 2" hard disk.

However, the cable failed, and I'm told by the seller that there are two type of these

cables, one that can support the electrical requirements of external hard disks, and one that cannot.

Is that true

Thanks,
Ron.

Hom3r · 17-01-2011, 18:49

I have two Western Digital 320GB HDD, and if I use any other cable than he one supplied the drive will not work, somebody suggested length might be an issue.

Graham M · 17-01-2011, 18:53

There is sometimes another type of this sort of cable with 2 USB plugs on one end to provide extra power, it could be this that the seller is talking about

ronbarak · 17-01-2011, 19:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graham M

There is sometimes another type of this sort of cable with 2 USB plugs on one end to provide extra power, it could be this that the seller is talking about

Hi Graham,
No, that is not the case. Here is what he wrote:

Quote:

I am afraid that you didn't know that external hardrive need special USB cable, because of the high power consumption. Even the connectors are the same, but the cable for external hardrive is different.

You can try this cable with other device such as camera, mp3 player and I bet it works

As for what Hom3r suggests, that may hold water as the cable is 5 feet long.

Does anyone know where can I find the specs for USB cables used for external disks (Google didn't help much) ?

qasdfdsaq · 17-01-2011, 21:14

It's mainly about quality and length of the cable; certain (but not all) external hard drives draw power from the USB port and longer/poorer quality cables will have voltage droop, which may be high enough to cause the plugged in device to not get enough power. But that wouldn't cause the cable to actually "break" though.

19-01-2011, 13:38

Are you sure you don't just need one of these?

ronbarak · 19-01-2011, 13:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

It's mainly about quality and length of the cable; certain (but not all) external hard drives draw power from the USB port and longer/poorer quality cables will have voltage droop, which may be high enough to cause the plugged in device to not get enough power. But that wouldn't cause the cable to actually "break" though.

The failure I referred to is:
When connecting to one 2" external disk, I hear repeated "knocking" from the disk, as if it seeks to the same spot each second or so.
When connecting to another external 2" disk, the disk is recognised, but trying to access data on it causes Windows 7 to behave erratically.

qasdfdsaq · 19-01-2011, 20:18

Sounds like it could be voltage droop. I get this sometimes if I use certain USB ports (even two different ports on the same motherboard) when one port is connected by a different quality cable than the other inside the machine. Just a poorer quality cable or port, but certainly not "the wrong type".

The one posted by LSainsbury above should be better, you could also try a different USB port (ones on the back of a machine work better as they're directly connected to the motherboard) or powered ports on an external device (e.g. monitor, USB hub, etc.)

Graham M · 19-01-2011, 20:25

USB is a standard, there isn't a "different sort of USB" for higher power requirement devices, as has been said it depends a lot on the quality of the cable and voltage drop could certainly pose a problem with cheaper cables, a decent cable with possibly 2 plugs should help, especially if one port cannot supply the required current to power up the drive.