Walter H writes:

For years I've been having trouble getting certain large drives, that do
work in the HD24, to connect with HD24Tools. An example is a Seagate
Barracuda 400G drive that I use a lot. Sometimes it would work, sometimes
not, hard to predict, lots of voodoo involved. The same problem happened
regardless of whether I used a VIPower external caddy or the Alesis
Fireport.

I finally did a bit of testing on the lab bench and it turns out that the
problem is that the power supplies that come with these adapters do not
provide enough current from the +12V line to allow the drive to spin up. The
Barracuda draws around 2A for about 20 seconds when it first powers up.

So I hacked an old ATX power supply (you can get these practically for free
from any computer recycling place) to replace the VIPower power supply. And
it works perfectly! 100% reliable startup and connection.

In case anyone else is interested, here's how:

1. Cut the cord off of the existing VIPower supply. Although the connector
is six pins, the cord itself just has two black wires, one yellow, and one
red, just like the hard drive supply wiring inside a computer.

2. Open up the ATX supply and unsolder all the existing wires that go to the
motherboard and drive connectors, EXCEPT THE GREEN WIRE, from the printed
circuit board. Leave the green wire!

3. Solder the red/yellow/black wires from the VIPower cable to the ATX power
supply printed circuit board, where you removed the original
red/yellow/black power supply wires from. Black is ground, red is +5V, and
yellow is +12V; this is usually marked on the printed circuit board, in case
you forgot what came from where.

4. Solder the green wire to where the black wires were. (The green wire
needs to be connected to ground in order to turn on the supply.)

And that's all! Takes just a few minutes. This approach would probably work
just as well with a Fireport as with the VIPower; the supplies and
connectors are identical.