non-standard USB sockets on 2.5" drive enclosures

Hi all,
I just bought a USB 2.5" hard drive enclosure, so that I could use an
old 20gb notebook drive as portable storage. The unit I bought is a
cheap model, and it's blocky and ugly. But it's small and transfer
speed is good, so no complaints there.

My real beef with this model is the COMPLETELY NONSTANDARD use of a USB
"Type A" socket on the enclosure (photo
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...73-018-03.jpg).
Why did they use a "Type A" socket, which is supposed to go on the
host computer and never on the USB device, according to the standard?
The slightly more expensive enclosures all use a standard "Mini B"
socket, which allows you to connect the drive with a standard A-MiniB
cable. Such as this one:
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...146-065-01.jpg

With this cheap enclosure, I pretty much have to use the bizarre
Type-A-plug-to-Type-A-plug cable which comes with drive. That means I
have to carry around the cable which comes with it, which is a pain.

Does anyone know why they chose to use the wrong type of plug on these
devices? Is it possible to desolder the Type A socket and replace it
with a Mini-B socket?

Lastly, is there anywhere I can buy a spare USB cable with Type A
*plugs* on both ends? I poked around on Froogle and couldn't find a
single one. Anyoen have a source?

Thanks!

Dan Lenski

Dan Lenski wrote:
> Hi all,
> I just bought a USB 2.5" hard drive enclosure, so that I could use an
> old 20gb notebook drive as portable storage. The unit I bought is a
> cheap model, and it's blocky and ugly. But it's small and transfer
> speed is good, so no complaints there.
>
> My real beef with this model is the COMPLETELY NONSTANDARD use of a USB
> "Type A" socket on the enclosure (photo
> http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...73-018-03.jpg).
> Why did they use a "Type A" socket, which is supposed to go on the
> host computer and never on the USB device, according to the standard?
> The slightly more expensive enclosures all use a standard "Mini B"
> socket, which allows you to connect the drive with a standard A-MiniB
> cable. Such as this one:
> http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...146-065-01.jpg
>
> With this cheap enclosure, I pretty much have to use the bizarre
> Type-A-plug-to-Type-A-plug cable which comes with drive. That means I
> have to carry around the cable which comes with it, which is a pain.
>
> Does anyone know why they chose to use the wrong type of plug on these
> devices? Is it possible to desolder the Type A socket and replace it
> with a Mini-B socket?
>
> Lastly, is there anywhere I can buy a spare USB cable with Type A
> *plugs* on both ends? I poked around on Froogle and couldn't find a
> single one. Anyoen have a source?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Dan Lenski
>
Newegg has at least one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...o.x=15&Go.y=32

Pen wrote:
> Newegg has at least one.
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...o.x=15&Go.y=32

Thanks! I've since found a really cheap A-A USB cable, 3 feet for
$1.69: http://www.firefold.com/ProductInfo....d=USB-AA-3-IVY

I still don't understand why this enclosure was designed with a Type A
socket. Kinda retarded... I think the same PCB is used in all the
cheap 2.5" enclosures, since they all seem to have the exact same
stupid Type A socket. Oh well.

Dan

On 12 Jan 2007 18:27:27 -0800, "Dan Lenski"
<dlenski@gmail.com> wrote:

>Pen wrote:
>> Newegg has at least one.
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...o.x=15&Go.y=32
>
>Thanks! I've since found a really cheap A-A USB cable, 3 feet for
>$1.69: http://www.firefold.com/ProductInfo....d=USB-AA-3-IVY
>
>I still don't understand why this enclosure was designed with a Type A
>socket. Kinda retarded... I think the same PCB is used in all the
>cheap 2.5" enclosures, since they all seem to have the exact same
>stupid Type A socket. Oh well.
>
>Dan


I'd imagine they did it deliberately to prevent use of a
normal cable, in case a drive used more than 500mA power.
I'm thinking this because their cable has the 2nd plug that
might be used to deliver more power as it wouldn't have any
other purpose and would have otherwise been cheaper to omit.

That doesn't make it a good design though, and IIRC the
sockets have a different mounting configuration so you can't
just replace the offensive socket, unless the PCB happened
to be designed to accept either. It's hard to tell if the
case is even deep enough once you factor for the PCB
spacing, otherwise at worst you might rotate the new plug by
90', put down a sheet of insulating plastic over the PCB
then epoxy the new plug in place - soldering jumper wires to
the original holes. Might not be as easy as that since it's
so small but a similar approach could work to mount the jack
wherever space permits.

kony wrote:
> I'd imagine they did it deliberately to prevent use of a
> normal cable, in case a drive used more than 500mA power.
> I'm thinking this because their cable has the 2nd plug that
> might be used to deliver more power as it wouldn't have any
> other purpose and would have otherwise been cheaper to omit.

Yeah, that is possible... it's still dumb though because most computers
don't need the second plug, so it would be nice to be able to use a
normal A-to-Mini-B USB cable. The nicer enclosures still use the split
plug on the computer end, but they have a Mini-B plug on the other end.
It's really weird that whoever made these didn't stick with the USB
standard, although the device is otherwise quite functional.

> That doesn't make it a good design though, and IIRC the
> sockets have a different mounting configuration so you can't
> just replace the offensive socket, unless the PCB happened
> to be designed to accept either. It's hard to tell if the
> case is even deep enough once you factor for the PCB
> spacing, otherwise at worst you might rotate the new plug by
> 90', put down a sheet of insulating plastic over the PCB
> then epoxy the new plug in place - soldering jumper wires to
> the original holes. Might not be as easy as that since it's
> so small but a similar approach could work to mount the jack
> wherever space permits.

That's a good idea about the epoxy to hold the smaller plug in place.
It just might work!

Dan

So... I ended up making my own homemade USB A-to-A cable. I simply cut
two old cables in half and spliced together the wires. This cable
works perfectly fine with this hard drive enclosure. I was actually a
bit surprised that it can do high-speed USB over this cable with no
problems, considering that the spec requires a TWISTED pair of signal
wires. I guess the length of wire that I mangled is only a few cm...

Dan