[plug] 2.5 USB Enclosure

[Craig Ringer]

On Sat, 2005-08-06 at 11:50 +0800, Chris Caston wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-08-06 at 11:47, Daniel Pearson wrote:
> > Time to get a new power supply :P
> > 
> 
> They ended up with a TR2-430W (and they complained heavily about the
> price despite the fact I only made about $8 markup) but I didn't bring
> out a usb pci card so I got an angry phone call they tried to use the
> hub again and XP said something along the lines "There is not enough
> power to run this device"

There are both powered and unpowered hubs. An unpowered hub can only
power simple devices with very low power draw, such as mice and
keyboards. I'd expect a USB key to fall into that category too, but that
depends on (a) the USB key not lying to the hub about its power
requirements and (b) the USB key's designers not totally screwing it up.

I have had problems with every USB hub I've had the misfortune to use.
Not just power issues either, but general reliability problems and
bizarre quirks like devices just powering off until the hub is reset.

If I need more ports, I just install a USB card these days - they're
cheap and easy, and more importantly they actually work.

As for "sucking all the power out," I find it difficult to believe that
a USB key could use any significant amount of power compared to, say, a
CPU or HDD. If the machine has the power to spin up its hard disk on
boot, it has the power to run a USB key. Are you sure there wasn't an
electrical fault involved? It's also not impossible that the /OS/ is
crashing in such a way as to instantly power off the machine (not
directly related, but reiserfs, I'm looking at you) when the device is
plugged in.

--
Craig Ringer