Usb Data Transfer Help, Please!

[CK9]

Okay, please read this in it's entirety before trying to answer, as you might say something that just doesn't help (and that's irritating).

Okay, I have a normal desktop harddrive that I use to store info from my laptop when it gets too full.  In order to do this, I've had to use a special USB->Sata cable and a seperate power supply.  In order to circumvent the annoyance of having to find an available outlet (as many of the things can't be unplugged), I bought an A to A USB cable so I can just mount the drive in my desktop and hook my laptop up to it that way.  However, upon trying to test the cable to see if it was bad or not, I realized that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.  So, I need to know how to do this properly.  1) Do I need any special softwear? 2) Do I need any special adapter(s)?

[BlackBox]

The USB can't deliver enough power to the 3.5" drive to power it without a separate power cord. It can with 2.5" (laptop) HDDs, however.

So, unfortunately, you are probably out of luck. :-/

[CK9]

okay, hacker, you missed the part where I said I want to mount the drive into my desktop which = it is a part of the desktop at that point which then = it is hooked up to the desktop power supply

[BlackBox]

Oh. Plugging it into the desktop should be straightforward.

You need a SATA cable and a free SATA power cable inside the machine. (They are thinner than the normal large 4 pin power connectors, usually black in color but not always).


Edit by Mez:  Edited again: removed my comments, CK9 didn't give the correct description of what he wanted to do

Plug the SATA cable into the hard drive and into a connector on the motherboard (it only goes in one way, don't worry about orientation). The connectors on the board might be labeled something like "SATA 0" through "SATA 3" or something like that, it shouldn't matter which one you use.

Mount the drive into the drive bay (sorry, can't really get any more generic than that, since all cases are different, you'll have to figure out how to do that).

Boot the computer, the drive should be recognized right away. (If not, you need to make sure SATA AHCI drivers are installed for the SATA controller on the motherboard. If your other hard drive is SATA, this shouldn't be a problem).

This is preferable to using a USB cable to connect the drive to the desktop machine (unless your desktop doesn't have SATA or something), since you will get -much- improved transfer speeds (Maximum of 3 Gbit / sec vs 480 Mbit / sec, though the drive probably cannot deliver anywhere near the 3Gbit max).

As far as actually using this USB cable. Is it an actual enclosure? Or just some sort of adapter cable (not familiar with the adapter cables, just enclosures). You can plug it into the power supply connector from the computer as mentioned above. If you don't have a SATA power connector (it's the larger of the 2 connectors on the hard drive), you will need an adapter to go from the regular 4 pin to the SATA connector.

Generally the USB side of things should not require any kind of drivers or software installed on the host machine. This is true for enclosures at least. It will appear as a USB mass storage device to the OS (basically, if flash drives work, which are another kind of mass storage device, then the hard drive should work as well).

[Mez]

Plug the SATA cable into the hard drive and into a connector on the motherboard (it only goes in one way, don't worry about orientation). The connectors on the board might be labeled something like "SATA 0" through "SATA 3" or something like that, it shouldn't matter which one you use.
 

You slightly missed the point blackbox

Follow hackers instructions on putting the HDD into a spare drive bay and connecting a SATA power connector to the drive (or get a molex to sata power connector if you don't have one).

Then connect your SATA to USB connector to the drive and trail the USB wire out of the case (if its long enough I would do it out of the back and cable tie the usb wire to the case so you don't pull it out of the SATA drive accidentally).

The drive will turn on and off with the desktop power supply.  The USB lead you plug into the laptop (fairly obvious).  Other obvious thing is to unmount (safley remove hardware) the drive or at least not be using it if you reboot your desktop as the power will be cut to the drive

Job done


I assume that the A to A USB adapter is just for an extension to the A to B connector, the B end of which plugs into the SATA to USB convertor?

Hope this is what you were really looking for?

[CK9]

It looks like noone here understands what I thought would be simple wording....


What I have been using:

- a normal computer harddrive
- a special cable that connects an internal hard drive to a USB port while it is not inside a computer
- a power adapter to power the hard drive

What I WANT to do:

- Mount the hard drive in my desktop (hooked up like it normally would be)
- Use a USB A (Male) to USB A (Male) cable to tansfer data between my laptop and the hard drive via the USB ports

Searching for info on how to do this turns up:
- thousands of results for the cables (which I have already purchased)
- a few posts on forums asking how to do it (all of which are either unanswered or about moving data from an XP machine to a vista machine).

Now do you guys get what I'm saying?

[Mez]

In laymans terms

How to share the drive from the desktop over a network

Then how to connect to the share from the laptop


However CK9 was trying to connect the two computers together over a A to A usb cable (not nice, needs special software, never done by myself)

Edit:  CK9( can't network his laptop + desktop together wireless on laptop not good enough, doesn't have another rj-45 connection to the router)

[BlackBox]

Well, using a straight A to A cable isn't possible at all (A to A cables violate the USB spec actually, and you could even damage the motherboard or power supply by connecting two computers together like that).

What I have seen are some sort of "A to A" cables that have some kind of bridging chip in the middle (usually looks like some kind of plastic box or "bubble" in the middle of the cable). See: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/248

That seems like the easiest way to do it. Failing that, I would just use the network and set up filesharing (if one of the computers isn't / can't be connected to a network, there are a couple options besides this A to A cable with a bridge. You could use two USB to Ethernet adapters with a crossover cable, or a Firewire (IEEE 1394) connection between both computers. (Firewire can be used directly for networking, if both machines have a firewire port)).

[CK9]

only the dektop does =\

[Freeza-CII]

Get a 3.5 USB 2.0 hdd enclosure and be done with it.  simple and easy no reason to jury rigg the hdd to just sit on the desk out in the open.

Or you can just share the drive over a network or direction connection computer to computer.