Customer Reviews

Apricorn USB Power Adapter Y Cable AUSB-Y (Black/Grey)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Pros: Works like a charm.

Cons: a bit pricey.

I bought this because I needed more power than what was available in one USB port to power my Western Digital MyEssential external hardrive. The harddrive wouldn't work on my Dell laptop through one port.

I bought it to power an external hard drive from my PowerBook laptop, which has two USB ports on either side of the keyboard. The Y pieces are too short to reach.

It seems to be a good quality cable though, at a great price.

Even the portable drives I use may work fine from a standard cable, it's worth having this Y cable for when other drives need more power. I'll never be caught lacking of power for portable drives with my laptop. Good insurance.

My company needed to use external usb hard drives to get data off of our compact PCI processors, but the usb ports on the processors didn't provide enough power. We even tried 3rd party powered usb hubs, but that didn't help. This Y cable solved the problem, and so far has been 100% reliable. We tried one other brand, too, which only worked part of the time. With these Y cables, our hard drives get recognized in windows every time.

Product was shipped quickly & allows you to link 1 usb device into 2 ports for more power

I purchased this product in order to use my external hard drive to back up everything on my computer. The hard drive would not work without additional power. This adapter cord worked perfectly. I was easily able to back everything up on my computer without losing power. The cord was exactly what I needed and worked great.

Bought this to use with a Western Digital 250GB USB drive. You will need it with some USB ports, like those on a monitor.

Works great.

Some hard disks are advertised as powered by single USB cable. Don't take it for granted. Works slower that way. Add this cable and power your HD.

I bought one in January 2010 and used it to run a WD Passport 750G USB drive. The drive showed up, so I didn't think anything further of it.

I bought an iPad in May 2011, and decided to buy another one of these. I tested, and couldn't get my iPad to show anything but "Not Charging". I tried 2 computers, plus an iPad wall-wart.

Results:
* The black plug works as expected. Power (1A even) and data are carried.
* The grey plug does absolutely nothing.

I thought I'd pull my old cord and test it -- same thing. My WD drive was spinning up because it needed 480ma.

I tested and I get no ohms among Vbus pins. No ohms betwen ground pins. No ohms between shield pins. No cross-connect between ground and shield. So far, everything looks good.

When I cut one open and inspected the connectivity, there is nothing to keep power from feeding back into the USB hub. This could be a problem if it worked, because if the grey had slightly higher voltage, it could feed back into the black male port.

For the grey end, the 2 data pins are not shorted, which is required/recommended for some ports to provide +5V.

Even doing this, I couldn't get power from the grey plug.

I have other, cheapie cables that work, so I'm sticking to them. Amazon has them for a third of the price of this cable.

UPDATE: It might just be the devices. I tried three different types of Y cables, and none of them provided any power when only attaching the powerleg. I tried 3 different systems: Thinkpad T61p, Dell PE400SC, Dell PE SC440. I tried three different devices: iPad, and iTouch, and an iPhone4. I tried two other hard drives, and they spun up with just the power leg on three different Y cables.

This cable works very well for me! My 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Go works well with it. =]

Neutral Comments:
The V part of the Y is very long. About 9 inches per wire.

The cord is bulky (~1cm in diameter). Although, this could just mean extended durability.

I would definitely recommend this wire to anyone looking for some extra juice for their USB devices. But if you're looking for something stylish and sleek. This isn't the product for you. :P