SATA Power Connector / Adaptor with HD Activity LED Output?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve Sr.
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Steve Sr.

The SATA power connector on a hard drive has a signal to provide a
disk activity LED output on pin 11 of the interface connector.

Does anyone know if there are any cables or adapters that will provide
this LED output signal? I don't want to tack one onto the drive and
void the 3 year warranty so am looking at doing this through the
connector.

Have any of you engineering types seen just bare SATA power connectors
available from connector vendors? If I could find a bare mating
connector I could wire up what I need in a connector.

Thanks,

Steve
 
Steve Sr. said:
The SATA power connector on a hard drive has a signal to provide a
disk activity LED output on pin 11 of the interface connector.

Does anyone know if there are any cables or adapters that will provide
this LED output signal? I don't want to tack one onto the drive and
void the 3 year warranty so am looking at doing this through the
connector.

Have any of you engineering types seen just bare SATA power connectors
available from connector vendors? If I could find a bare mating
connector I could wire up what I need in a connector.

Thanks,

Steve
Click to expand...

I don't know much about SATA, but I thought the first drives don't
use the power connector defined in the standards. If you do find a
drive with the new SATA power connector, you might consider this
adapter as a source of the connector you need:

http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm?ProductID=SATAPOWADAP&topbar=topbara.htm

I'm curious where you found the info that pin 11 is a LED driver.
The docs I've read from http://www.serialata.org seem to treat pin
11 as reserved - maybe the LED got added since the first release ?
After all, it is not like standards guys to think of practical
features :-)

Paul
 
I have the P4P800D and recently added a Seagate 120gb SATA drive. The LED
works after just plugging in the power and SATA cable.
 
Harry,

This LED connection is from the controller on the MB unless the drive
has a separate connector. I have 2 identical drives and would like
visual confirmation of which is which when operating. The motherboard
output won't provide this.

Steve
 
Paul,

See below...

I don't know much about SATA, but I thought the first drives don't
use the power connector defined in the standards. If you do find a
drive with the new SATA power connector, you might consider this
adapter as a source of the connector you need:

http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm?ProductID=SATAPOWADAP&topbar=topbara.htm
Click to expand...

The new WD "JD" SATA drives have both a legacy and SATA power
connector. I looked at the SATA power adapter that you referenced and
it is similar to the ones that came with the MB. They don't offer
connection to pin 11 on the drive.
I'm curious where you found the info that pin 11 is a LED driver.
The docs I've read from http://www.serialata.org seem to treat pin
11 as reserved - maybe the LED got added since the first release ?
After all, it is not like standards guys to think of practical
features :-)
Click to expand...

After about a week of trading messages with WD tech support I finally
got them to e-mail me the Tech Reference manual for the drive family.
The HD activity LED on pin 11 of the SATA power connector is described
there. The output is active LOW and requires a positive supply voltage
and suitable dropping resistor to complete the arrangement.

Steve
 
Steve Sr. said:
Paul,

See below...



http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm?ProductID=SATAPOWADAP&topbar=topbara.htm

The new WD "JD" SATA drives have both a legacy and SATA power
connector. I looked at the SATA power adapter that you referenced and
it is similar to the ones that came with the MB. They don't offer
connection to pin 11 on the drive.


After about a week of trading messages with WD tech support I finally
got them to e-mail me the Tech Reference manual for the drive family.
The HD activity LED on pin 11 of the SATA power connector is described
there. The output is active LOW and requires a positive supply voltage
and suitable dropping resistor to complete the arrangement.

Steve
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the only reference I've found so far, leads to
this company. I was hoping for a Molex or Amp part number, but
this is all I could find. It looks like the connector pins
are separate, so you could hack your LED circuit with it. I
think many other implementations of the power connector, will
simply group the 15 pins as 5 groups of three, which means
the open collector LED signal is permanently grounded by the
connector, as per the instructions in the standard. At least
this Circuit Assembly connector offers separate pins (it is
a backplane connector intended for SATA server backplanes ?).

http://www.circuitassembly.com/EngineeringDrawings/u709016d.pdf
http://www.ca-online.com/Data_Sheets/22SAHS.pdf

There has to be more connectors out there, if only I can discover
the technical name for the connector (i.e. won't have the
word SATA or serial ATA in it for sure...)

Paul
 
Unfortunately, the only reference I've found so far, leads to
this company. I was hoping for a Molex or Amp part number, but
this is all I could find. It looks like the connector pins
are separate, so you could hack your LED circuit with it. I
think many other implementations of the power connector, will
simply group the 15 pins as 5 groups of three, which means
the open collector LED signal is permanently grounded by the
connector, as per the instructions in the standard. At least
this Circuit Assembly connector offers separate pins (it is
a backplane connector intended for SATA server backplanes ?).

http://www.circuitassembly.com/EngineeringDrawings/u709016d.pdf
http://www.ca-online.com/Data_Sheets/22SAHS.pdf

There has to be more connectors out there, if only I can discover
the technical name for the connector (i.e. won't have the
word SATA or serial ATA in it for sure...)

Paul
Click to expand...

Thanks for looking. Eventually Amp, Molex, and others will probably
make this connector but SATA is still brand new. Probably the thing to
do would be to get a PC backplane version which would hopefully have
independent access to all of the pins unlike the adapter cables.

Steve
 
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