External Hard Drive...

[vroom6sri]

Should there be enough power in a PS2 cable (the pinned keyboard & mouse cables) to run an external hard drive? I have tried it with my 2m ps2 cable and the power light on the ext hd lights up but it doesn't seem to spin the 40gb drive up. Is the cable length sapping some power or is this just a no hoper? Is there an ports on the PC that might have enough juice to power it? If so I assume I could get an adapter.

The reason I'm asking is it'll be easier that carting the power supply around with my ext hd. Yes, I'm that weak!

[narmi]

I assume you are using a 2.5" drive, since 3.5" drives require 5V and 12V power supplies (PS/2 port only has a 5V line). I don't think a PS/2 port is designed to source enough current to power a HD, but a USB port should.

Maybe this page will help you find a solution, though I think a USB port can supply 500mA, not 100mA as stated on that page. I do know that there are USB-powered drive enclosures for 2.5" drives.

[vroom6sri]

Thanks, Narmi. That is some interesting reading!

It's a 3.5" drive I'm using. I'll have to see if I can find a USB to PS2 (male) adaptor to see if that works.

I thought the PS2 might just have enough. I have a Belkin Omni Cube KVM switch. I used to have to use the power supply with it when I just had the monitor leads going through it. But when I plugged my keyboard & mouse cables into it there was enough power there to negate the need for the power supply.

[thomas]

As Narmy already wrote, you need 12V for the 3.5" HDD. Neither PS/2 nor USB have a 12V line. You cannot power a 3.5" HDD without 12V.

If it was the cable which prevented the HDD from running, then the sympoms would be different. The HDD would power up and run successfully for a while but then either the cable or more likely the computer would burn and smoke.

To avoid the need for a power supply, you could lead one of the internal power connectors (with red/black/black/yellow lines) to the outside and connect it to the HDD.

[vroom6sri]

Thanks, Thomas. That makes sense.

ACTUALLY... The HD in my A1200 is a 2.5" (isn't it?!?!) so if I get a cradle for that would I be able to use it with just a USB cable as a power cable and data cable?

[vroom6sri]

My A1200 is currently at the bottom of a big pile of boxes in the furthest reaches of my loft as we do some major home improvements (baby no1 on the way!). Can anyone tell me what type of Hard Drive is in my A1200. All I know is it is a 4gb one split in 2 2gb partitions.

I'm curious to know as I want to see if I can get an external cradle for it. I've tried transferring files other ways but have had no success so just want to plug it in directly to my main PC and transfer to and from once or twice and then put it back in the A1200.

Any help will, as always, be appreciated.

God bless pancakes.

[thomas]

You are joking, aren't you ?

Nobody but you can know which kind of HDD you have built into your Amiga. It could be any kind.

Originally the Amiga 1200 has a 2.5" IDE HDD like in a laptop. But no Amiga was delivered with a 4GB drive. Such big drives didn't exist back then.

With a bit tinkering and an adapter cable it's also possible to use a 3.5" drive. And if you have an accelerator with SCSI option it could as well be a 2.5" or 3.5" SCSI drive.

The only option which is very unlikely is S-ATA, because no such controller exists for the Amiga.

Nobody can tell unless you open the case and check it yourself.

[vroom6sri]

Ah. I see. I bought the HD about 2 years ago and fitted it but was just wanting to know if there was a definitive type of HD for the A1200. I know it's the "standard size" as it fitted perfectly into the HD cradle.

What really prompted this question is that I have just had to remove the HD from my laptop. I had always thought there were 2 types of HD - 2.5" & 3.5" - and that my laptop and A1200 both used the 2.5". However, upon removing the HD from my laptop ready for replacement it looked completely different to what I remember of my A1200 one.

I want to look at buying an external cradle for my Amiga's HD (which will hopefully be able to take it's power from the USB as someone already mentioned) but I am now wondering if there are 2.5" slimline HDs, "standard" HDs, etc.

[Jope]

If it fitted in the A1200's stock HD cradle, then it is indeed a 2.5" parallel ata drive.

Many places sell USB enclosures for those, but they usually only take in 9,5mm high drives. If your A1200's drive is 12mm high, I don't think you can find a suitable enclosure for it.

Many 2.5" enclosures have two usb cables with them in case one usb connector doesn't supply enough current to spin up the drive.

But what are you planning to do now? Do you want to transfer data to the Amiga drive from a PC (using WinUAE) or what is your plan?

[vroom6sri]

I was hoping to be able to connect it to my PC and transfer to and from it in Windows as I am assuming the file systems are the same. Would I be wrong? I was hoping this woul be a simple way of getting data swapped as I have tried doing this via floppy disk but any disk I write to on the Amiga does not read properly in the PC. I'm on a budget and short of time so thought this HD cradle option would be my best bet.

[thomas]

I was hoping to be able to connect it to my PC and transfer to and from it in Windows as I am assuming the file systems are the same. Would I be wrong?

File systems are different. Windows does not know how to handle an Amiga HDD. It sees it as completely empty, not even partitions are seen. Only special programs like WinUAE can read and write it.

I was hoping this woul be a simple way of getting data swapped as I have tried doing this via floppy disk but any disk I write to on the Amiga does not read properly in the PC.

I am not entirely sure what you mean. If you write to an Amiga disk, the PC certainly cannot read it. Same file system, same problem as with the HDD. But if your Amiga writes to a PC disk, the PC should read it just fine.

I'm on a budget and short of time so thought this HD cradle option would be my best bet.

This is a possible solution, at least. You just need to get WinUAE up and running. You could try to transfer the Kickstart ROM from the Amiga to the PC by floppy disk. I imagine that transferring two files (transrom to the Amiga and the ROM back to the PC) is not too difficult. After that you can use your Amiga HDD (wich probably has AmigaOS installed on it) to boot WinUAE and then transfer files to or from the Windows HDD.

[vroom6sri]

Thanks VERY much for the detailed information, Thomas. Much appreciated.

I was indeed referring to writing data to a PC 720k floppy on the A1200 using CrossDos but my PC floppy drive won't read it properly. It sees the files there but it fails when it tries to read the files.

WinUAE is running well on my PC. I may give this a try still.

So I will still have to open up my A1200 and measure the height of the HD to see if I can get a suitable cradle. Is it that simple?

[thomas]

There are IDE-USB adapters without a cradle. For example this one: http://www.sharkoon.de/enghtml/usb.htm#drivelink

I have one and it is as simple as connecting it to the HDD and to the PC. It comes with a power supply for 3.5" devices. 2.5" drives can be powered through USB. It also comes with rubber protectors for the HDD (one 3.5" and one 2.5"). The good thing is that you can use it for all kinds of IDE HDDs, even S-ATA.

[Jope]

Those are handy. I have a similar one, but it's a no-name hongkong affair.. Works fine, though. :-)

[vroom6sri]

Thanks, Thomas. That looks ace! A multi purpose adapter for different sorts of HD if I'm reading that right. That'd be perfect. Not pretty perhaps but functional (kinda like me!). Any idea on price for these? Euros or pounds?

[thomas]

I think I bought it for about 25 Eur at my favourite electronics shop. Amazon.de sells it for 21.75 Eur.

There are others which are cheaper and some which are more expensive. This one came handy because it fits to all, 2.5", 3.5" AND S-ATA and it came with these two protectors.

[vroom6sri]

Right. All set to order one of these Sharkoon as they seem reasonably priced and good for a few uses for me.

As a novice WinUAE user would it be fairly straight forward for me to connect my A1200's HD to my PC and then get (the awesome) WinUAE to recognise the drive ready for file transferring or do I have to add lots of drivers, change configurations, edit program lines, etc.

[thomas]

Really simple. Just connect the drive to an USB port and make sure that Windows recognised it as a mass storage device. Then run WinUAE, go to hard drives page and click on "Add Hardrive". Select the drive from the list and click on "Add Harddrive" (there's another button with the same text). That's it. If this is the only HDD, WinUAE will even try to boot from it (if it is bootable).

Just make sure that Windows does not touch it. Do not initialize it. Do not create partitions on it. Do not assign a drive letter to it. Each of these actions will destroy all Amiga data on it and they will also cause WinUAE to refuse to use it.

[vroom6sri]

Thanks for the instructions, Thomas. Won't Windows automatically assign it a drive letter though when it detects it as a mass storage device or is this OK?

[Jope]

It will not assign a drive letter, since there are no partitions it can detect.