How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676

Take a wire cutter and cut off the orange wire at both ends. Throw it away.

It's the wire that carries 3.3V power. No SATA drive has ever used it so you'll never going to need it.

Molex, the old 4-pin connector doesn't have 3.3V. So a molex to SATA adapter works with the HDD because it doesn't have an orange wire with 3.3V...

I had been wondering if there wasn't a way to do this

CCWTech

@scottalanmiller said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

@CCWTech said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

@scottalanmiller Is it a standard size Power Supply or is the case SFF?

Large case.

Replace power supply.

jt1001001

You could put nail polish over the pin on the power connector on the drive itself. Or a small piece of electrical tape

Danp

https://hardforum.com/threads/power-disabled-pin-3-issue-workarounds-with-all-or-some-newer-drives.1977087/

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

How can I stop the power on Pin 3 so that the drive will fire up?

Hot glue

syko24

Byte My Bits did a video on this a while back. Electrical tape over the third pin works.

Youtube Video

dbeato

@scottalanmiller said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

Dell Inspiron 5676

Is this for a gaming system or what?

scottalanmiller

@dbeato said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

@scottalanmiller said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

Dell Inspiron 5676

Is this for a gaming system or what?

It is, yeah. So nothing super critical.

marcinozga

@scottalanmiller said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

@marcinozga said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

How about Sata to molex adapter and another molex to sata?

Couldn't find one, I looked. Do you know of one? That would be simple.

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=7642 - male sata to female molex
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=8799 - male molex to female sata

kevinc

I ran into this and ended up putting Kapton tape over pin 3.

Since the tape was wider than the pins I put a piece of tape over all the contacts and used an x-acto knife to cut out the tape covering the other pins.

Do not use electrical tape. The glue is very gummy and will ooze under the higher temperatures. When you withdraw the connector (or drive from the cage) the tape could stay behind and will probably leave a sticky mess in the connector.

Kapton doesn't have these problems. It will continue to hold under high temperatures and will release cleanly when you need it to.

kevinc

@kevinc
Forgot the link where I saw this first

https://zackreed.me/hgst-7k6000-not-spinning-not-working/

gjacobse

I agree with @kevinc - don’t use Electrical tape. Gods you should have seen the old fabric style electrical tape. It was an even worse nightmare!

scottalanmiller

@gjacobse said in How to Connect Power Disable SATA Drive to Dell Inspiron 5676:

I agree with @kevinc - don’t use Electrical tape. Gods you should have seen the old fabric style electrical tape. It was an even worse nightmare!

Yeah, wasn't going to, have had that melt into stuff way too many times.

scottalanmiller

Confirmed, snipping the orange wire (I needed help as I can't see orange) did the job, drive showed up immediately.

Dashrender

Interesting problem - how did you know it was Power Disabled?