Using Spare power supply to power hard drive 1

[Gavona]

I have a little cable that will connect a floppy or normal Hard drive to a USB port. It needs an external power supply. I have a spare but what would i need to do to power it on and to avoid any risk of ruining the PSU (I have an idea that it is bad to run them without a load for example).

Thanks,

Gavin

 

[vacunita]

you mean something like this:

These usually come with something like this to power the drive:

I suppose you could connect it to a normal PC power source directly if you have a spare.



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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Gavona]

That is certainly the USB thing that I have - but no power supply came with it.
I do have a spare 230 Watt supply - but normally it would be switched on via the power on switch on the PC case (momentary connection from the motherboard) etc..

Gavin

 

[vacunita]

I'm not sure how you would get it to turn on. There some power supplies that hove the power switch on them, next to the fan. So you could try to use one of those. although i think the newer power supplies lack this feature.

If you can find an old power supply, that turns on with its own switch instead of through the motherboard, you could use that to power the hard drive.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[jim532]

on the connector of the PSU that connects to the mother board there are 2 pins you have to momentarily cross to get it to power up. Not sure which ones they are though.

 

[edfair]

Turn on is pin 19, usually green and a black. But a small switcher in an external box goes really cheap on ebaly.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[jim532]

Also the older AT style power supplies have a power switch

 

[Gavona]

Thanks Ed that is the info I was looking for on pins etc. (Must be me but I could not find on ebay .co.uk)

Gavin

 

[Freestone]

Will a single hard drive present enough of a load to a normal PC PSU to keep it from dropping power?