USB 3.0 PCI-E x1 Card Power Surge w/ my ext. 1TB HDD?

edited November 2013 in Hardware
Hello everyone,

I purchased a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCI-E x1 Card made by Inland (I have a floppy drive made by them, works great), the card uses an AsMedia XHCI chip (AsMedia 104x) according to the drivers, and on my Windows 7 Pro x64 system, I have an external hard drive with an external SuperSpeed USB 3.0 enclosure and a 1TB Seagate SATA Hard Drive plugged into the card, and the system states there's a power surge on the USB Hub (XHCI) when I leave the hard drive on for not even 15 minutes. I'm trying to copy files to my 200GB IDE Drive so that I can stream my movies and music to my Xbox 360 and other computers, and after a few minutes to 15 minutes, the power surge occurs and I have to restart the computer. I dislike using the USB 2.0 ports since it took days to backup my laptop's hard drive, and it'll take weeks to copy over 100GB worth of movies and music (mostly movies).

The USB 3.0 card requires a floppy power cable, which fortunately, I always carry spares in my basement. My hard drive works great when I have it hooked up to my laptop since I got that to work without rebooting the laptop, but my desktop says nope, not gonna work. My PSU is a 650W, and I also have a 60GB SATA HDD (old Xbox 360 drive since the old Xbox 360 died a year ago) for Windows 7 Pro x64.

My PSU still works, so IDK what the problem is. Could it be a bad power connection or can I just remove the power adapter from the card itself and test it to see if it works without it?

Share your thoughts.

Thanks.

Comments

  • What else is your PSU powering; that is, what CPU and Video card are you running.

    Also, is the external HD powered of the USB bus or can it be powered externally?

    CV
  • underjack wrote:
    What else is your PSU powering; that is, what CPU and Video card are you running.

    Also, is the external HD powered of the USB bus or can it be powered externally?

    CV
    CPU: AMD Athlon X2 64 Dual-Core 4000+ 2.1GHz
    GPU: PNY NVidia Ge-Force 8400 GS 512MB PCI-E 2.0 x16 (backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0 x16)

    The Hard Drive is powered by an external power adapter. I have my 1TB drive in my desktop running Windows 8 Pro (backed up the 150GB partition before formatting that partition), and my 60GB Xbox 360 HDD (from my old broken Xbox 360) is going to be used as a tester to see if it'll work with Windows 8 Pro since my 1TB drive copied files to my laptop without a problem with the Super Speed USB 3.0 built-in.

    I'll post details to see whether or not it works.
  • You won't do any harm not having the floppy connector hooked up. If it was USB 1/2 it would more than likely work fine as the external drive sources it's own power elsewhere, and is not reliant of what (or what not) is delivered via the USB bus. USB 3 could have made this mandatory, so it may just outright not work without the proper power. You will not harm the card running it without, however, it will likely just manifest as no hardware.

    Your PSU should be more than enough for what you listed hardware wise. Perhaps check the power adapter cable (to the floppy style connection) to make sure there's no shielding peeling away or what not. Inspect the card as well for any phyiscal damage; if it's still ongoing RMA it with MicroCenter.
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