Stanley Sidlov wrote:
> fwiw: recently I saw on ebay an external USB case for Notebook sized
hard drives. (like this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-2-5-EXTERNAL-HARDDISK-CASE-HD-HARDDRIVE-IBM_W0QQitemZ6803473362QQcategoryZ86759QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem.
>
> I 'won' the auction at 1 cent US and paid the $15 shipping from China. 
>
> I didn't have an opportunity to use the case, as I was waiting to
purchase a new HD for the laptop. However, I just sent the laptop to IBM
for LCD repair, and took the HD out so that I could have access to the
files for the week it's being fixed. 
>
> Now, one thing that the description doesn't mention is that it has a
very unusual USB cable. It has 3 connections. 
>
> Two cables ends go into the third. There is no external power supply.
The badly written 4 page manual half in Chinese, says that 'not all
notebooks and desktop USB connections can supply the 5V/500mA that is
required to run a drive. You may need to attach to a powered USB
connection.'
> I have a eCS 1.5 desktop running on a BE6-II motherboard (1.1 USB
header), and a powered Belkin hub. When I connected only one of the cables
to the Belkin's USB, the 'green' power LCD came on. But the resource
monitor did not recognize the disks. When I connected the SECOND USB wire,
the LCD turned red shortly, and the UBS Resource Monitor announced the
presence of the HD's drives. 
>
> Anyway, I don't know if there are extra electronics to handle the two
connections. I had never seen this type of cable before. I don't know if
having one would fix some people's issues. The instructions mention that
you should look for HDs that have a need for less than 500mA to make sure
that it works. I liked the idea of the mini-external drive as it seems more
portable than the larger 5.25" drives. 
>   
I bought one of these (or at least similar) a few months ago when my 
laptop harddrive wouldn't stay booted for any useful amount of time 
before it locked up and required a power off and then the harddrive 
wouldn't be seen by the bios.  The 3rd connection has something to do 
with power (I don't recall the specifics in from my instructions and I 
don't have access to them).  I generally just use 2 of the connections 
(the right 2 work fine for me...  mine it is fairly easy to tell which 2 
are the "main" ones).  I really like the unit.  I had 2 partitions on it 
so it took some digging to get the right settings on the os2dasd.
Andy


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