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I removed a working mSATA hard drive from a Dell Latitude E7450. It appears to have an SATA connector, and I can replace it with a full SATA drive and the computer can see that new drive.

But when I try to plug this drive (still in its frame, with the SATA adapter, which I think is a SATA to mSATA Adapter Caddy model FCN4M) into an external USB adapter and/or an external USB hard drive case to copy files (both are externally powered), the drive is not seen at all by the other computer (just the adapters are seen, and the adapters work fine with the full SATA drive).

Why doesn't this drive + it's mSATA to SATA adapter work with any of my SATA to USB adapters?

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simpleuser
  • 936

1 Answers1

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The reason for this is that msata drives require 3.3V. Dell's motherboards make the 3.3V rail available to the sata connector, but most motherboards (and drive enclosures) don't, since plain old 2.5" sata drives don't require that voltage, only the 5V.

In turn, the dell msata caddy assumes that the 3.3V is present and simply jumps the appropriate pins from the sata connector to the msata connector. If you're plugging the caddy into a sata port on anything other than a dell, you're not powering your msata card and the PC doesn't see it.

tavr
  • 46