Thinkpads Forum

Why do all of them come with Y adaptor USB Cables?

The normal 2.5" hard drives meant for notebooks that the enclosures support have higher power requirements than the portable HD's specifically designed to be portable, thus a second USB cable for extra power.

Thanks for the quick reply!

Would that mean I'm SUPPOSED to use BOTH cables in two USB ports at once then? I've been using only one and managed to make clones of drives with no problem.

I ask because I planned on replacing this 6 foot Y cable with a 1 foot single USB cable as I plan on using this portable drive for recording.

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to use both at once; some more energy efficient 5400 RPM drives might do fine with only one but there's always some risk there. Certainly with my 7K100 in my enclosure I always use both cables.

The official power limit on USB is 2.5w per port, iirc. So this is right in the middle of the active power usage for an average 2.5" HD, meaning most of them would be too much for it. And forget about initial spinup... that uses even more power.

The limit is not that low in practice though (probably 5w), so that is probably why using only one port works. Probably not a good idea to plug two hard drives in the same pair of ports though.

I haven't had a problem with any of my (many) SATA or PATA enclosures, using only one USB port, on X6x or T6x notebooks,within Windows. I have some single port USB cords that I use, as I don't like the extra plug out there flapping in the breeze.

I did have one weird experience with an enclosure, however, that bears mentioning. I had imaged an X60 drive with Norton Ghost 2003 (via floppy disk), onto a 2.5" hard drive inside an enclosure. Later, I tried to put the image back onto another drive replaced into that notebook, and Ghost would not work.

I assumed the new drive was defective and I sent it back for a replacement. The new drive had exactly the same behavior, i.e. ghost refused to work with it when the image file was on a hard disk in a 2.5" enclosure. This particular enclosure didn't even come with a two headed USB cable.

My curiosity was piqued at this point, so I copied the ghost file from the 2.5" drive onto a 3.5" drive, which was separately powered by an AC adapter. On booting up, Ghost recognized this independently powered external drive, and the clone went forward normally.

There was something, and I do not know what, that allowed Ghost to WRITE an image file onto this self-powered 2.5" enclosed drive, but it would not read the image file later from this drive for cloning a new drive inside of the X60. I have been able to duplicate this experience since then with external 2.5" drives, which sometimes will accept ghost image files but they cannot then be used as the source with this program for being read and then cloned over to a new drive in the laptop. I have no explanation for this behavior other than that I have observed it several times and am sure that this is a "real" if confusing observation.

Ken Fox wrote:I haven't had a problem with any of my (many) SATA or PATA enclosures, using only one USB port, on X6x or T6x notebooks,within Windows. I have some single port USB cords that I use, as I don't like the extra plug out there flapping in the breeze.

I did have one weird experience with an enclosure, however, that bears mentioning. I had imaged an X60 drive with Norton Ghost 2003 (via floppy disk), onto a 2.5" hard drive inside an enclosure. Later, I tried to put the image back onto another drive replaced into that notebook, and Ghost would not work.

I assumed the new drive was defective and I sent it back for a replacement. The new drive had exactly the same behavior, i.e. ghost refused to work with it when the image file was on a hard disk in a 2.5" enclosure. This particular enclosure didn't even come with a two headed USB cable.

My curiosity was piqued at this point, so I copied the ghost file from the 2.5" drive onto a 3.5" drive, which was separately powered by an AC adapter. On booting up, Ghost recognized this independently powered external drive, and the clone went forward normally.

There was something, and I do not know what, that allowed Ghost to WRITE an image file onto this self-powered 2.5" enclosed drive, but it would not read the image file later from this drive for cloning a new drive inside of the X60. I have been able to duplicate this experience since then with external 2.5" drives, which sometimes will accept ghost image files but they cannot then be used as the source with this program for being read and then cloned over to a new drive in the laptop. I have no explanation for this behavior other than that I have observed it several times and am sure that this is a "real" if confusing observation.

EDIT: On re-reading this, I was not clear about what happened with Ghost 2003 trying to use the image file stored on the drive in the enclosure. What happened was that when I tried to restore the image onto the new drive (which was put into the X60's drive bay), the image file WAS FOUND on the external 2.5" drive in the enclosure, however the program was then unable to recognize that there was a drive in the X60, and therefore had no options as to where to restore the file. This has happened enough times, and with 2 different brand new 7K200 drives, that I am sure it is a real bug or problem using Ghost 2003 with at least some external 2.5" enclosures. When the image file was transferred onto the 3.5" drive, the image file on the 3.5" drive was recognized, and SO WAS the new drive in the X60.