If you check the drive specs at the manufacturers sites you will find that most 'desktop internal' 3.5" IDE drives need over 20 watts regardless of the capacity - basically there are 2 motors (discs and heads) and an almost standard set of logic in all of them .
It may be worth checking what drive is in the housing, and looking up it's max current draw at peak use, and at start-up JimB. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Diane Poremsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 3:23 PM Subject: Re: Anyone familiar with the norwood dirve enclosure? >> Apart from speed issues, The standard USB port is designed to supply a maximum current of 0.5 Amps @ 5 Volts. This is equivalent to a 10 Ohm load dissipating 2.5 Watts. Many mainboard (Laptops included) cannot supply this amount of power. >> I was surprised when it worked on the tablet. If I were the betting type, I woulda lost... :) I was sure it wasn't a bad case or drive when he said it wasn't powered though. I rarely plug my drives into the usb ports directly but was surprised when I plugged the main plug of one drive in last night and it worked. I always use the second plug and didn't realize it was optional on usb 2. Not that I would use it with just one - I'd rather be sure it's getting enough power. >> I wonder how many service technicians bother to do the checks, or even know how ? >> I don't know about techs, but tech support told him if deleting something in the registry didn't work, he would need a powered case. They never asked if he had usb 1 or 2... and had they asked, should have known it wouldn't supply enough power. He said he asked why they sold it if it wouldn't work without power and they never answered. <g> I found an old 1.1 powered hub we're not using anymore and I'm going to give it to him - along with one of the powered cases I bought the other day. He's returning the unpowered case. -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME list is hosted on a Windows 2000(TM) machine running L-Soft international's LISTSERV(R) software. To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have questions about the list, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME list is hosted on a Windows 2000(TM) machine running L-Soft international's LISTSERV(R) software. To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have questions about the list, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
