Gateway DX4885 HDD power cable

Garyh1

I upgraded the HDD to a new SSD in my Gateway DX4885 PC which has an Acer Microstar MS-7829 motherboard.  I would like to keep the old HDD as extra storage, and there appears to be another empty socket on the motherboard for a power cable (labeled HDDPWR2), but I can't find a cable with a plug that will fit it.  I actually found a schematic which calls the socket "BH1X6-2.5PITCH_WHITE-RH"; it is a 6 pin socket and I think the "2.5PITCH" means the pins are 2.5mm apart.  Does anyone have any idea where I could buy such a cable?  Obviously, the other end would be a standard SSD card power connector; it looks like from the schematic that only pins 1-2 and 5-6 are used. 

billsey

Here is an Amazon link to a kit of those connectors, though it'd be pretty expensive if you have to buy so many in order to build one cable. I'd get a SATA power Y connector or extender, then use that set to crimp the right connector on, but I already have the crimper for those.

billsey

From the schematic all six pins are used, two for +12V, two for Ground and two for +5V. Without them all the drive wouldn't work. There should, however, be SATA power connections on the wiring that comes out of the power supply. If not you can use a splitter cable to power a second drive off the first drive. I think you'd likely have to make the cable yourself, those power sockets are really only for some specialized uses, like putting the MB in a kiosk without a case and normal PC power supply.

Garyh1

Thanks for the reply.  Unfortunately, there is no SATA power off of the power supply.  Instead there is a wiring harness plugged into HDDPWR1, which actually already has a splitter cable going to the original DVD and then on to the HDD, so at least HDDPWR1 is active.  It is this cable that I am trying to get a duplicate of, so I can use the other socket to power another SATA drive.  I found a label on the wiring harness into HDDPWR1 that says 50.3KA01.001 VSO (14/6/14).  I figured out that the wiring was made by a Taiwanese company VSO on 6/14/2014 (using the dd/mm/yy international date format - my computer says it was built in China in 2014 )and emailed them but haven't received any response.  Why Acer used such an unusual socket for this purpose is beyond me - why they built in this expansion capability but only through a 6-pin connector that isn't available anywhere makes no sense to me.  If anyone reading this can come up with a cable that terminates in this connector, please let me know.  I found a couple of similar Acer wiring harnesses for sale on eBay that may have the same connector; I am waiting to get confirmation back from the sellers.  The other ends seem to have one standard 15-pin SATA power connector and one mini-SATA power connector, so I am hoping it will work for the one HDD I want to add.

You can see the two SATA power sockets (small white rectangles) in the bottom left corner of the motherboard:



Here is the unusual connector that fits into those sockets: 

billsey

Here is an Amazon link to a kit of those connectors, though it'd be pretty expensive if you have to buy so many in order to build one cable. I'd get a SATA power Y connector or extender, then use that set to crimp the right connector on, but I already have the crimper for those.

Garyh1

Thank you, billsey!  I at first read your last reply literally and I thought those connectors wouldn't work because they were 2.54mm pitch and the socket I had was 2.5mm pitch.  So I didn't read the rest too carefully.  But the simple answer was one of the things you mentioned - a regular 15 pin SATA power Y splitter cable!  After spending hours searching potential websites literally all over the world for an exact match (found some in Europe for about $50 and two months shipping time, etc.), it finally hit me that I should forget about using the second 6 pin weird socket on the motherboard, and just do a split off of one of the two existing 15 pin female connectors on the end of the existing cable.  Got a pack of 3 (for future use) for all of $5.97 delivered in a couple of days from Amazon, and it worked!  I now have the original DVD-RW drive, the new SSD and the old HDD all working off of the original cable to the motherboard!  Thanks again for mentioning the Y splitter, even if you threw me a bit off course by talking about still needing to crimp new connectors, etc.

billsey

Where that fails is if one or more of the drives pulls too much power. The reason the used two of those on the MB is so there wouldn't be too much current draw from each. With modern HDDs, ODDs and SSDs having three on a single port is likely just fine.