Powering an External HD

[zeppelin04]

I am looking to buy an external enclosure for a laptop hard drive. I run ubuntu on the laptop and no longer need all that space confined to the netbook. In the process of picking out an enclosure I see they use a power adapter or Y-splitter.

Do I have to use both connector on the Y splitter for the drive to function? My seagate just has one. My hope is that it just provides better speeds.

Do they make an enclosure that provides power and data transfer with a single usb connection? I am hoping to get by as cheaply as possible.

 

[strollin]

Generally speaking, if your external enclosure is designed for laptop 2.5" drives then it won't need a separate power connector. Enclosures designed for 3.5" drives almost always require a separate power cable (usually with a wall wart to plug into AC).

The Y cables are sometimes used with 2.5" enclosures to supply more power via USB ports and have nothing to do with extra speed.

What do you mean that your seagate just has one? I thought you hadn't purchased the enclosure yet? The Y cable would be used to connect the enclosure to the laptop so in order to make use of the Y splitter, you would need to plug it into 2 USB ports on the laptop.

 

[zeppelin04]

My Seagate is one micro USB to one USB. It is not in a y configuration. My hope was to be able to do this and not use two USB connection on a laptop. This is largely because I would like to be able to plug it into my western digital TV live.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

2.5 laptop drives wether they are PATA or SATA can work with no problems on one single USB port.You don't even need the enclosure to use it.All you need is a simple PATA or SATA to USB wire such as this.

PATA:

SATA: