Hanging hard disk off head unit... seems to work fine!

[BD]

I have a Pioneer Premier head unit, that supports USB.

It's unclear whether the manufacturer intended the head unit to be
used with USB hard disks, mainly because of their power requirements.
Most USB hard disks draw over .5A, and sometimes over 1A. The USB port
on the head unit provides .5A.

After some experimenting, I found the following combination to be
perfectly useable:

-2.5" laptop hard drive
-External USB2 enclosure with an external power input (in my case,
it's 5V)
-Regulated car power adapter set to 5V.

I've done some research on ground loops (possible complications of
running a device off two power inputs), and on the need for a
regulated versus non-regulated external power adapter.

But it would seem I just happened to pick the right bits, without
necessarily knowing all I needed to know at the time. It all works
fine. No static, no pops, no brownouts on the disk...

80GB of capacity, in a package as big as a small cigar case. Cool.
Plus, the USB port on a computer appears to have all the power needed
to fully supply the disk. So I don't need any extra adapters for
hanging the drive off a computer.

I like it.

BD.

[Mister.Lull]

On Sep 11, 10:12 am, BD > wrote:
> I have a Pioneer Premier head unit, that supports USB.
>
> It's unclear whether the manufacturer intended the head unit to be
> used with USB hard disks, mainly because of their power requirements.
> Most USB hard disks draw over .5A, and sometimes over 1A. The USB port
> on the head unit provides .5A.
>
> After some experimenting, I found the following combination to be
> perfectly useable:
>
> -2.5" laptop hard drive
> -External USB2 enclosure with an external power input (in my case,
> it's 5V)
> -Regulated car power adapter set to 5V.
>
> I've done some research on ground loops (possible complications of
> running a device off two power inputs), and on the need for a
> regulated versus non-regulated external power adapter.
>
> But it would seem I just happened to pick the right bits, without
> necessarily knowing all I needed to know at the time. It all works
> fine. No static, no pops, no brownouts on the disk...
>
> 80GB of capacity, in a package as big as a small cigar case. Cool.
> Plus, the USB port on a computer appears to have all the power needed
> to fully supply the disk. So I don't need any extra adapters for
> hanging the drive off a computer.
>
> I like it.
>
> BD.

Sounds cool!

You should throw some photos online so that we can gawk!

~Mister.Lull

[arthur[_5_]]

The USB specifications allow power and signal from a single cable and
connector(s). The engineering design wanted to support powered serial
devices without the need for a separate power source. Think keyboard,
mouse, etc. If it doesn't work from a particular USB PC port, just
move to another port as some ports can become over loaded with such
devices.

cheers
arthur



On Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:12:57 -0700, BD > wrote:

>I have a Pioneer Premier head unit, that supports USB.
>
>It's unclear whether the manufacturer intended the head unit to be
>used with USB hard disks, mainly because of their power requirements.
>Most USB hard disks draw over .5A, and sometimes over 1A. The USB port
>on the head unit provides .5A.
>