I’ve been archiving some old hard drives – Amiga hard drives as it happens.

I have a USB to Parallel ATA adapter, but powering the drives was a bit of a headache. Usually I’d just pull the side off the PC and find a dangling cable. Instead, I made a quick 12v to Molex converter.

Looking at the specification on some drive labels, the drives I have typically need less than 500ma on both the 5v and 12v.

I have a quite a few DC-DC buck converters. It seems that every time I need one I can’t find one so end up buying several (it’s more cost effective, honest). The recent tidy up and organisation of most of my boxes of components mean I now have a lifetime supply of them.

I cut off a molex plug and cable from some strange cable… (molex splitter, 5v removed on one end…, probably for a fan or something).

Then I attached a 5.5/2.5 barrel jack connector. The wires to the 12v & ground molex connector are soldered to the back of the buck converter inputs.

I’ve got a random wall-wart 12v 2amp power supply to run it off.

5v and ground are soldered to the outputs of the buck converter.

It came out quite neat, but still needs a case. Maybe an on/off switch would be useful too.

It has been really useful – I’ve now been through my pile of random hard drives. Most of which function. Lots of outdated PC installations, and a couple of quite precious bits of Amiga stuff that I created 20 years ago.

It’s a pity that one 9 gig SCA SCSI drive won’t fire up. I’m hoping it’ll be happier when I get it on a fast & wide bus. Fingers Crossed.

I think this is one of those 10 minute builds which will end up kicking around on my desk being quite useful for a very long time.