Is there anyway to power a SATA drive without a molex cable?

[Kaiju]

The only reason i'm wondering is this review states the only con of the drive is, "Need to use Molex connector if you use included SATA cable."

Review

 

[Kaiju]

If oyu use the enlcosed SATA cable you have ot use molex power, if you use a standard SATA cable you can use molex or SATA power..

Why use a SATA power cable/adapter though, when you can just use a molex? Do some drives not have a molex input? If so, why?

 

[Kaiju]

Some SATA drives include a PATA-style 4-pin Molex connector for use with power supplies that lack the SATA power connector.

Adaptors are available to convert a 4-pin Molex connector to SATA power connector. However, because the 4-pin Molex connectors do not provide 3.3 V power, these adapters provide only 5 V and 12 V power and leave the 3.3 V lines disconnected. This precludes the use of such adapters with drives that require 3.3 V power. Understanding this, drive manufacturers have largely left the 3.3 V power lines unused. However, without 3.3 V power, the SATA device may not be able to implement hotplugging as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Source: Wikipedia

------------------------------

So, basically you only need to use a SATA adapter if you want your SATA drive to be hot swappable? I've actually tried hot swapping before using only molex and it worked fine, so I'm guessing it's only a precaution.

Still confused though. My Raptor is molex only, fair enough as it's the GD version, but I bought a WD SATA II 320GB a few months ago and that was still only molex. I would've thought that'd be SATA power only.

 

[Kaiju]

All SATA drives have the SATA power connector, it's part of the standard. It's the 13 pin connector next to the data connector.

Ah, on a second look, I now see the SATA power connector.

So I take it's best to use that instead of simply using a molex input? No performance improvement though, heh, just the ability to hot-swap.

 

[Kaiju]

There's no benefit to using them other than to free up PSU molex connections for other devices.

How often would you want to hot swap a drive that's screwed into the PC?

I thought the SATA power cables run off a molex anyway?

The drives are on rails, not screwed.

 

[Kaiju]

You can get adapters which give you one or two SATA power connectors from a molex but all modern PSUs will come with them directly attached, mine has 6 on 2 looms I think,

Thanks once again for the clarification mate.