Front USB not reading external HDD after upgrade?

Aaron7323 · July 29, 2020

Good morning forum dwellers. So I recently upgraded my parents PC. Their old machine was an i3 2100 and I upgraded them to an i5 4670. Before the upgrade my father's hard drive worked perfectly plugging straight into the front USB. Now there is only a single back USB that seems to have enough juice for his HDD. The front USBs are only 2.0 but they used to work fine. Now, it seems like they dont deliver enough power to his HDD. PC works perfectly aside to this. What could have caused this? Might I add, that his PSU is old and a bit janky. The old machine only required a 4 pin connector for his motherboard, the new mobo needs 8 pin but the psu only has a 4 pin. I simply used just the 4 pin, could this be limiting the power to the front and back USBs? I've tried reinstalling USB drivers etc. Thanks for the help guys!

Origami Cactus · July 29, 2020

Yes, using 4 pins in an 8pin power might cause lots of different problems.

Aaron7323 · July 29, 2020

1 minute ago, Origami Cactus said:

Yes, using 4 pins in an 8pin power might cause lots of different problems.

So if I switched power supplies you think it would fix the problem?

Origami Cactus · July 29, 2020

1 minute ago, Aaron7323 said:

So if I switched power supplies you think it would fix the problem?

I really think so, because the usb power circuit might be on the 8pin pins, which are currently empty. But I'm no expert tho, haven't studied the pin layouts for 8pin and the motherboard.

Can you loan any powersupply to test it out?

Aaron7323 · July 29, 2020

2 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

I really think so, because the usb power circuit might be on the 8pin pins, which are currently empty. But I'm no expert tho, haven't studied the pin layouts for 8pin and the motherboard.

Can you loan any powersupply to test it out?

Indeed, my system has a decent PSU so will try it out. Thanks so much !