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Dcgod

macrumors newbie
Nov 16, 2013
11
15
Can anyone post a pic of the connector pin out instead of that asci art pic? It’s impossible to decipher which side is which. Especially confusing when we see the pic of the cable with red wires on the outside.
 

cobra521

macrumors 6502
Dec 14, 2016
393
136
FL
Rico,

The eject button works fine for the external DVD writer - at least for the external Pioneer BD-RW BDR-XD05 on my 7.1

Tom
 

bwinter88

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 20, 2012
152
1,913
Can anyone post a pic of the connector pin out instead of that asci art pic? It’s impossible to decipher which side is which. Especially confusing when we see the pic of the cable with red wires on the outside.
Not sure how it's confusing. It's the back of the connector, with the tab on top. As was specified. 🤷‍♂️
 

Dcgod

macrumors newbie
Nov 16, 2013
11
15
Not sure how it's confusing. It's the back of the connector, with the tab on top. As was specified. 🤷‍♂️
Mainly since the connector sits vertical and the chart is horizontal. So it sounds like if you’re looking at the connector while it’s plugged in, the latch is on the left, rotate 90 degrees and now it’s on top. Is the 3rd ground required? (Where the 3.3v is normally). I’ve tried with and without the last ground By binding to another and haven’t gotten a drive to power up yet.
 

ZombiePhysicist

Suspended
May 22, 2014
2,884
2,794
So I noticed something interesting. When my spinner hard drive is cleaning up a time machine back up inside the J2i bracket, there is a fair amount of sound/noise. It sounds like rain falling on metal pitter patter. Anyone else notice this?
 

ZombiePhysicist

Suspended
May 22, 2014
2,884
2,794
So I noticed something interesting. When my spinner hard drive is cleaning up a time machine back up inside the J2i bracket, there is a fair amount of sound/noise. It sounds like rain falling on metal pitter patter. Anyone else notice this?

Just wondering if anyone else was suffering this and if they figured out a way to make the noise stop. Wondering if putting in some rubber washers might dampen as a shock mount of sorts.
 

bwinter88

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 20, 2012
152
1,913
Mainly since the connector sits vertical and the chart is horizontal. So it sounds like if you’re looking at the connector while it’s plugged in, the latch is on the left, rotate 90 degrees and now it’s on top. Is the 3rd ground required? (Where the 3.3v is normally). I’ve tried with and without the last ground By binding to another and haven’t gotten a drive to power up yet.
You have a loose connection or badly seated pin. Any combination of 12v/5v/gnd will power a drive.
 

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,324
3,003
^^^^Looks like Promise is selling the cable separately:


Wonder why they are not selling the enclosure w/o drives ❓

Lou
 

umpmanjoe

macrumors newbie
Jun 7, 2020
2
0
^^^^Looks like Promise is selling the cable separately:


Wonder why they are not selling the enclosure w/o drives ❓

Lou
Yeah, my friend who's printing the enclosure for me found the cables. Super excited. I ordered them from B&H and they're being delivered tomorrow
 

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,324
3,003
^^^^Booth links work for me 1387914497.gif

Lou
 
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reden

macrumors 6502a
Aug 30, 2006
725
845
Yeah, my friend who's printing the enclosure for me found the cables. Super excited. I ordered them from B&H and they're being delivered tomorrow

Does your friend have the STL for it so other people can print it too?
 

storkinsj

macrumors newbie
Sep 24, 2013
20
6
TL;DR: Using 2.5 to 3.5 inch drive mount adaptors in existing J2i

What a great thread- I wish I had read through the whole thing before getting my J2i (coming today).

I found one more reason to get the drive bay, which I hadn't counted on needing since I have the 32TB Promise raid: ESXi needs its "own drive" to install to. I will be running an esxi instance and didn't realize it can't go into a partition. I could have run the Pegasus as JBOD but I wanted to keep the raid. Of course once I grok'd the weird Apple faux-NVMe situ... I realized this was the best choice. I hella should have gone for one of your cool 3d printed ones though.

I realized that the 8TB "spare" that ships with the J2i is just that- a spare drive for my 4X8TB raid. So that goes in the drawer. I was planning on buying one now anyway- you never know when they will stop making a drive and I plan to keep this puppy for a LONG time.

As for the silly notion of actually running 3.5inch SATA drive standalone... I decided to go with these. This keeps the SSDs from flopping around in there. But I hella should have gone with the 4 SATA SSD setup I could have with the cool 3d prints.
 

storkinsj

macrumors newbie
Sep 24, 2013
20
6
Sorry- My clipboard doesn't always take very well- especially from the URL bar.

This is a link to a 3.5 to 2.5 adapter. So if you already were foolish like me and didn't use the super cool printed SSD cage, you can use these for mounting your SSDs. As far as I can tell, there are no 3.5inch form factor SSDs.

Looks like the inatek bracket is for 3.5 inch too. A couple things:

-A rehash from earlier in the thread, but this bracket area for the drives is the outlet for the top case fan blowing through the CPU stack. My CPU has 28 cores. So you want something that won't block air or the fans will run harder and louder. The inatek bracket coupled with SSDs (smaller than 3.5 inch spinners) will likely have MUCH less affect on cooling the CPU.
-HAVE A GOOD LOOK AT THE INATEK VIDEO. Note that you need to mount one of the drives upside down! I figured out the hardway that the cable for the J2i actually has one sata connector reversed. If you don't mount one drive upside down, the cable won't reach. One less reason to throw $400 their way. If you buy the promise cable, it is wise to remember this. I have mounted spinning drives both horizontally and sideways before, but I haven't mounted them upside down. I have a strange feeling it's a bad idea.
 
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