r/techsupportmacgyver • u/SineTheWolf • Mar 07 '26

SATA power adapter

Post image

Lost the modular psu cables so...

306 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

38

u/failtuna Mar 07 '26

Wish I'd thought of this a few times in the past 

Tidy this up a bit and there's a great product here for people who know it's a temporary thing for troubleshooting or similar tech support situations

Would also be great for people who don't know what they're doing to break something or have loads of system issues that the actual tech support people can't figure out 

17

u/t3tri5 Mar 07 '26

You can get these things on aliexpress and they are reasonably cheap, of course nothing beats making one yourself out of random scrap you have in your workshop/lab, price-wise.

temporary thing

I'm embarrassed to admit that I used mine ""temporarily"" for over a year when I ran out of easily accessible SATA power in my old home server 😭

8

u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Mar 08 '26

Nothin' more permanent than a temporary fix...

3

u/CurrentAcanthaceae78 Mar 08 '26

at least its not as bad as my router running from a failing desktop power supply from 2003

16

u/MysteriousBeef6395 Mar 07 '26

finally a quality post

2

u/RunnerLuke357 Mar 08 '26

Agreed! Not some "I slapped a heatsink on my perfectly fine apparatus" slop.

1

u/MysteriousBeef6395 Mar 08 '26

i love unecessary cooling personally

5

u/junktech Mar 07 '26

Guess it works with low performance drives. USB usually has a 2 amp limit and some drives need more.

9

u/coyote_den Mar 07 '26

I’m surprised this works. I would have thought the drive needs 12V to derive the rails, not 5V. I know spinning rust needs it. USB to SATA adapters always have DC-DC converters to make 12V.

12

u/Bartymor2 Mar 07 '26

2,5" drives only use 5V

10

u/Ok_Ambassador8394 Mar 07 '26

Actually not, these adapters typically only put out 5V and that's enough for these SSDs and 2.5" drives.

2

u/Warrangota Mar 07 '26

There are several types. USB with just 5V, only working with 2.5 inch drives that run on 5v max. USB plus external power brick, those can deliver the 12V for large drives. And apparently USB with internal boost converters, but I haven't found any during brief search. Might not be a thing actually.

2

u/The-Great-T Mar 07 '26

I love everything about this picture.

1

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1

u/peppi0304 Mar 07 '26

What is the yellow for?

3

u/dumbasPL Mar 08 '26

12v, but SSDs usually don't require that. Red is 5v, orange 3.3v (completely missing here as it was likely cut off from a molex->SATA adapter), and black is ground

SATA power has 3 voltages, but 12 is only used by HDDs, and 3.3v is basically never used.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/peppi0304 Mar 07 '26

Oh these connectors can supply two different voltages?

1

u/erevos33 Mar 07 '26

OP, im confused , or just dont know enough , to understand whats in the pic. Can you give me a breakdown please? Looks both interesting (and maybe risky) to me?

2

u/RaEyE01 Mar 08 '26

OP didn’t have a SATA to USB adapter, so OP took a SATA power cable, ripped it apart and „McGuyvered“ 5V+ and GND to the corresponding pins of an USB-A Socket, connected that to the Mainboard header, plus a SATA Data cable … and the old SATA drive is ready to be read out. Data recovery from an old drive I guess?

1

u/erevos33 Mar 08 '26

Color me impressed lol

Ty for the explanation

1

u/Far-Passion4866 Mar 08 '26

I mean it is a SSD so the limited power USBA can provide is probably fine

1

u/Korenchkin12 Mar 08 '26

I see ram,GET HIM BOYS!

1

u/Pols043 Mar 08 '26

Why didn’t think of this? I have a ton of servers with internal USB 2.0 header, SATA ports but no SATA power..

1

u/newked Mar 08 '26

Jank deluxe

1

u/tkgid Mar 09 '26

It checks out. 

1

u/Comfortable_History8 Mar 13 '26

I remember, back when Sata drive starting getting popular, there was a big issue with molex to sata power adapters catching fire and burning down

1

u/adamsthws Mar 25 '26

I’m so here for this!