Malfunctioning External Hard Drive Enclosure

Hello everybody. I have an ASUS G1S-A1 and recently swapped out its old: 160gb 5400rpm Hitachi HDD

for a:
320gb 5400rpm WD HDD

The swap went fine, and I bought a NexStar SX External 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure to hold the old hard drive. The enclosure is powered by a single PECULIAR cable, the likes of which I've never seen. From one end to the other, there are three plug locations:

#1) The mini-USB plug which inserts into the enclosure at one end;
#2) A USB (male) plug with two cables coming out of the back, running to #1 and #3, respectively;
#3) A special USB plug at the other end, shaped like a T, such that it has both USB (male) and USB (female) outlets 180 degrees from one another.

When I insert the #2 USB plug into my laptop, the power immediately cuts out on my laptop. This has happened 14 of the 15 times I have attempted to plug it in, and I've tried every combination of settings between the power switch on the laptop and that on the enclosure.

I have also tried plugging the (male) side of the #3 plug into my laptop, and while it does not cut the power on my laptop, it also does not reveal my enclosure in My Computer. I know the enclosure works because the third or fourth time I used it, I was able to see my drive and extract some files... and then it cut the power on me. XD

What's going on? Is there some sort of a power-draw problem? I don't understand much about computers, but when a power-off is so severe that pressing POWER, or unplugging and replugging the power cord, does not work, it sets off warning bells. The way I fix it is by removing or reinserting the battery of my laptop; that usually allows it to restart.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks very much,
Batman

 

Hi, I have a Vantec Enclosure as well. The #2 and #3 plugs as you refer to them are nothing special. Both are there to give your drive enough power to work since some USB ports do not give the 5V of power that they're supposed to. The T shaped port just allows you to connect another USB device without losing another port.

Now I'm not exactly sure how it's supposed to work, but try having both plugs connected into different USB ports making sure that you insert #2 first then #3. If your laptop still shuts down there could be something wrong with the enclosure. Just to make sure that the enclosure is the problem, you should test it on a different computer. If it doesn't then it could very well be that your G1S can't give the enclosure the required power. Also, it could be a problem with the cable, in which case you would have to use a different cable to test it. I would suggest you go to the Asus section and ask other G1S owners with enclosures if their laptops only need 1 plug to give enough power.