USB powered hard drive enclosures

[canyoncat]

I have a Sabrent 2.5" hard drive enclosure SBT-EKU25 that I am trying to use with USB on a Windows 7 laptop. The drive works but stops doing anything for several minutes at a time. There are no error messages, it just stops... no flashing or steady light. A minute or two later it picks up where it left off as though nothing has happened. It will then run fine again for several seconds and then it goes back to "sleep". I am trying to use the drive to backup files and it spends more time sleeping than doing anything else.

The drive enclosure does not come with any drivers and is supposed to be plug and play. I have checked the USB drivers and Windows says they are up to date. I have installed a 60Gb hard drive from an old laptop in it.

If i plug the the drive into the USB port on my Windows XP desktop it works fine.

 

[bassfisher6522]

What type of drive did you put in the enclosure? According to Sabrent's web site it only works with IDE drives.

Sabrent | USB 2.0 to 2.5″ IDE Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure – BLACK |

 

[canyoncat]

The drive inside is IDE, it's from an old laptop. This thing does work it just goes to sleep unexpectedly for long periods of time while I am trying to copy files to/from it. No error messages or anything, it just stops. After a minute or so it wakes up, copies a little more, and then falls asleep again... All of the files eventually do get copied and they seem fine on the other side it just takes forever. I only see this behavior from my Windows 7 laptop, when I connect it to my Windows XP desktop it works fine.

 

[DeaconFrost]

This is very common with USB-powered drives and laptops. Most of those enclosures I've seen come with a Y-cable so you can plug it into two USB ports at once to get enough power, if the laptop isn't supplying it. I don't know how reliable it is, but I was told that the USB logo next to the port will have a + sign on the top branch if it is considered a "powered" port. That shouldn't be an issue on a desktop PC.