Another one of my technology hacking posts!
In 2020 I 3D printed and assembled this:
It's a mount to fit a USB SATA docking station into the supporting bracket of my desk speaker shelf, primarily so I could plug the Atomos Ninja SSD into my PC while it was still in its caddy.
While it worked, I was never happy with the performance of that thing as the USB bus just couldn't maintain the transfer speed. Either that or the USB SATA dock was just crap. Either way I've wanted to replace it with a direct SATA connection for some time. The trouble was, how to do that. SATA cables aren't very long and aren't designed to be used over long distances. I have used eSATA in the past with good results, and I found that Startech are now producing a 1.8M eSATA to SATA cable. Perfect.
Startech also produce a 2.5" SATA dock with a flip out door and integrated status light, designed to fit in an expansion bay in the back of a computer. That was my starting point. I grabbed one when it was at its cheapest Amazon price, along with the long cable and an eSATA back plate. I must've had several eSATA plates in the past but couldn't find any, I suspect they got thrown away because I didn't expect to use it again.
So begins the build process, which kind of turned into a saga at the end. As usual, it's documented in pictures.
The first stage was creating a new bracket. The bracket that came with the tray was intended for a computer expansion bay and was honestly too nice to cut up. So I grabbed some spare sheet metal and made a new one. This is the other speaker shelf, flipped around so I'm presented with a fresh bracket... which I cut a dirty great hole in.
The tray fits on nicely. This was supposed to be the final position *foreshadowing*.
When the bracket and cable arrived, I went ahead and tested the setup. While a normal SATA or 4-pin Molex connector provides 12V and 5V, 2.5" disks will generally be fine with just 5V. Here I'm using an old fan coupler to power the disk from my bench power supply. It works perfectly.
This is the spaghetti of bracket and eSATA to SATA cable.
I wanted the eSATA bracket to disappear at the back of my machine, so I made a black rear plate using one of the blanks my case already had. I also didn't like the fact that the eSATA plug barely fitted and touched the insides of the slot.
I then did as the Rolling Stones did and painted it black. Well, actually I coloured it in with a black Sharpie but it works and makes the cable just disappear in the darkness.
Another shot with the black cable and new bracket.
I set SATA port 1 as hot-swap, the same way I did on my server for the backup drive bay. With the cable run up from my PC and the disk powered from the bench power supply again, I could see how well the thing performed with over 2M of cable between the SATA port and the disk. As I hoped, it was as good as a SATA SSD can get in sequential reads and writes. As I'm transferring over big files this is all I care about.
It also didn't draw much power, good as I ultimately intended to power it from USB.
Things were going well. Now I needed the USB power. I had this little Molex connector from... somewhere with quick-fit cables. As the cable is pushed into the slot it cuts the insulation, the same way a network cable is punched into a patch panel socket. Very handy.
I was originally going to just use a USB cable, but the first one I tried had cables too narrow for the blades to cut through the insulation and reach the copper. I didn't feel like wasting any more cables so I went modular, using a barrel plug socket and some thicker wire. They're glued down here to stop them flapping about. By the way Kingston SSDs are crap, this one is relegated to backup and testing duties where it may be killed accidentally.
Tested and working, I put the shelf back. It didn't work. I took it down and checked it again, fine. Back up, dead. I thought there could be some grounding issue with the metal desk but I eventually came to realise that this thing doesn't work upside-down.
It was not my original intention to have it upside-down, I just placed it that way when marking the screw holes to screw bracket to the shelf. It isn't completely symmetrical, so I just ran with it.
I had to re-mark the holes to move the bracket over slightly, hoping that I would mark and drill them in the right place and this wouldn't turn into an even bigger hassle. Fortunately, it worked out and the tray was finally mounted rightside-up. This is better for the power cable but it does make the release latch hard to reach.
Finally it was back in place. This is a much neater approach to what I did before, the SSD goes in nicely and without having to wiggle it. The tray is actually better this way around, opening away from me. The little LED only lights when there's a disk in, so it isn't constantly dazzling me like the old one did.
It's obviously much faster than the old dock and looks much nicer, although I'm still proud of my work to make the old unit and add a strand of optical fibre to carry the status LED from the circuit board to the front panel.
This is the reason I 3D printed the bare SSD holder for the Ninja V, as I knew I would be going down this route.
