This was supposed to be a post about how much better my new hard drive case performs than my old case but I couldn't get the new case to work.  So, like any curious geek I poked around to see if I could find out what was wrong even though I have very little knowledge of electronics engineering.  What I came to find was the shoddiest craftsmanship I've seen in a modern electronic gadget.  The reseller (not manufacturer) who sold the device through Amazon UK promptly issued a full refund so there's no hard feelings toward them.  The reseller told me not to send the defective unit back so I decided to prod a bit more and blog about it.

The case is a 2.5" HDD case model 42465 made by DeLOCK of Germany.  What makes this case unique, and why I ordered it from Europe when Akihabara is down the street, is that this is the only case available with a power over eSATA port (the port on the right).  It also has a standard USB 2.0 port for less gifted hosts.

Power over eSATA is basically a combination of USB and eSATA in one port which uses blazing fast eSATA for the data bus and USB to deliver power.  It's the only way to get a full speed drive without multiple cables or bulky AC adapters.

Of course speed means nothing if it doesn't work and that's the point of this post.  The drive was powering up but not being detected by the BIOS nor OS via USB or eSATA so it was definitely the case.

The first thing I noticed was this missing capacitor.  You can clearly see that something was there but broke off.  That alone was probably enough to prevent proper operation but there's more.

As I gently poked around I found I found these two components, a capacitor and resistor, more strongly adhering to the foam tape than the PCB.

Gently lifting the foam revealed a few more loose components.

Since I already received a refund I'm going to see if I can fix the case.  Reattaching the loose components should be no problem but I have to figure out the capacitance of the missing capacitor.  Wonder if Akihabara sells single capacitors.