IDE to usb hard drive adapter, any experiance?

[VariEze]

I had one a few years back, and I never got it to work, and that was under win98. Has anybody had any luck with one under puppy? What I'm referrng to is an adapter that allows you to connect an IDE drive to a usb port, and it comes with a power supply for the drive. Sometimes they are built into a case for the drive.

I'd like to get one that works now, so any input would be appreciated.

--Karl

[raffy]

If your system can use the boot parameter pmedia=usbide, that should do it. Pakt has successfully used pmedia=usbcd parameter for minipup, so the "usbide" is worth trying.

There are hard disk enclosures that draw power from USB.

Will let you know if I succeed booting from USBIDE.

EDIT: As John Doe said below, use "usbhd". The one I bought for a 2.5" drive costed me about $15. These are HK products.

[VariEze]

What enclosure do you have? where did you get it, and was it expensive? I don't even need to boot, I just want to mount an IDE HD via usb.

I just want to try to avoid buying a enclosure or adapter that won't work, since my past experiance was not to good with one.

Thanks --Karl

[John Doe]

I have two of these:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=2778

They work great. Just started tinkering with the firewire, but USB2.0 works perfect.

You may find that booting with one is nice also. I copy the 4 main files over to a partition:

initrd.gz
pup_216.sfs
vmlinuz
zdrv_216.sfs

and use these switches when the CD boots:

pmedia=usbhd

or

pmedia=usbflash

I was unaware of the one raffy posted. btw, it needs to be PMEDIA= (capitalized) in versions prior to 2.16.

It boots REALLY fast that way and you can move it around.

[VariEze]

Nice, I like it. ]

What I mostly need it for is so I can take the drive out of the DVR (dish network's "tivo") and take the mpegs off of it. it's an ext2 filesystem. also I have a whole bunch of 5 mb dries I'd like to use for stuff, instead of burning DVD's I've had trouble with DVD's geting corrupted, so I don't find them too useful for backup. a HD not powered up, and not dropped, is pretty safe, I've found.

--Karl

[d4p]

I've simpletech usb hdd. It works fine, but doesn't have exhaust fan.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 6086fc1b68

[rcrsn51]

I just picked up one of these:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=2785

It's handy because you don't have to open up a case. It took a bit of time to get the connection sequence right - power up the drive first, then connect the USB. Otherwise, Puppy wouldn't always detect it. You can also use it to mount another CD/DVD drive.

[VariEze]

rcrsn51,
I got one very similar or the same as that, and yes, power-up order is key, but I also found that it works best if I pre-format the drive to fat16. It's been great for music, I now have "albums" in the form of Hard drives. 5gb each. --Karl

[Flash]

... There are hard disk enclosures that draw power from USB. ...

If I remember correctly, the USB specification limits the power that can be drawn from a standard USB port to 2.5 watts (500 milliamps at a nominal 5 volts.) I recently measured the power consumption of an Iomega external 300 GB 3.5" 7200 rpm hd. When first turned on, it drew over 25 watts, then settled down to a little under 9 after it was up to speed.

I've seen some 2.5" external hard drives that draw all their power from the USB port(s). They come with a special connector that has two USB plugs, so they can draw as much as 5 watts from the computer.

[VariEze]

The one I have has a seperate power supply. To reduce cords all over the place, I did end up just sticking one of the HD power connectors out the back of the computer. I did have a problem at first because the HD power lead came from by the drive in the computer, not out of the power supply, so when I hooked up the external driven the internal drive would glitch. Solved by using a connector direct from the power supply. The drives seem to have an initial current inrush (charging caps?) then spin up current, then they mellow out, like Flash measured. --Karl

[rcrsn51]

Neat trick! I have also found that some USB drives must be plugged into a port off the motherboard. They won't work reliably if you use a USB extension cable or even a port on the front of the machine.

[VariEze]

You've got a point, even though there is a standard for the different USB versions, not all ports are created equally. Not all hardware designers seem to stick to the minimum standards. Also some MB's have only one high-speed usb port, and the rest are non-high speed. When you make a million of something, 1 cent is ten grand. --Karl

[bvjones59]

I have an NTFS-formatted laptop drive (the laptop died ) that I dropped into a purchased box w/usb connections - got it from Newegg. Have been using it w/Windows w/no trouble for some time as a backup drive. Puppy finds it with no extra effort: just shows up as an sda in Mutt or Pmount, same as any of my thumb drives.

[VariEze]

That sounds like it works really well! I looked at Newegg, and they have over 200 adapters and cases for ide to usb. Do you happen to knw the model # ?

[Flash]

Varieze, I think you won't find an external HD case with USB connection that doesn't work with Puppy. My advice is, worry about something like the kind of power supply connector it has. Some external hard drives I've seen use a nonstandard plug on the cord to their external power supply. What happens if that cord goes bad? (In my line of work I repair a lot of cords because of conductors that break at the connector. They were moved a lot.)

[VariEze]

It's looking that way, Everything USB I have works on Puppy, except for one zio CF adapter. I'm having really good luck.

I have not found a USB to IDE adapter or box that doesn't work, I've tried 3 now, one I have and 2 borrowed.

None of them would allow me to reformat the drive with Gparted. It will do something, but renders the drive inaccessible. I fix it easily with a direct connection, but it would be nice to be able to format by USB. I do think I'm asking too much.

[bvjones59]

VariEze, I've long since forgotten part no's. What's important is to know the size of the HD and number of pins. Newegg can help w/this, as can (I think) Cables to Go. If you're near a computer store like circuit city or best buy, or maybe even officemax etc, you can probably find a standard-size case there and ask somebody about it.

I can tell you mine is a SAN Max, model no HD-233, and the box measures about 13.4x7.2x1cm (The drive is an old laptop one, very small). Came with a little power adapter cable I could plug into an extra usb port for more juice, but I've never needed it. Had a larger, cheapo desktop-sized hard drive case that required a separate power cable plugged into the wall. The case got really hot if I left it plugged in all the time, and it eventually burned out the drive. This little guy barely gets warm, and of course turns off when the computer does.

When the SAN Max case first arrived, I thought I'd blown it: the size was fine but the connection didn't look right at all. Great, I think. I've got some sort of proprietary connection on my HD. Then I discovered that there had been a special "box" fitted over all the pins, which had made the actual connection internally to the motherboard. I carefully pried that off, and tada! a useable ide connection!

I've used that little box with gparted numerous times, at least for linux partitions. When I tried to create a FAT16 partition, I wound up having to re-partition it using DOS. Have read elsewhere that it's wiser to partition using the OS that will eventually reside on the drive: it's just safer. But it's done fine for every linux partition I've created.