Hi
I have a HP X360 laptop with a USB C socket. I use 2 external hard drives, one has USB B socket for power and data and one has USB A 3.0. Both came with relevant cables, one USB A 3.0 to USB A 3.0 and the other USB B to USB A 3.0. I bought 2 Anker cables to replace these and enable me to use the USB C socket on my laptop. The USB B to C works fine however the USB A to C doesn’t work. I know the USB A to C format is usually for charging a mobile phone or tablet and not for my purpose? Or Is this a faulty cable or something I’ve misunderstood or done wrong?
Thanks
USB C Help!
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Traditionaly, USB-A to any output should be able to do everything a USB-B would do, its just a different pinout for how it works. You can see from the reference below.
I would suspect your issue does not lie in the configuration, but resides in the cable/system setup. Do you have a phone you can hook up through the cable to your pc to see if it communicates? Do you have another cable to try out? These both would help to narrow down what could be going on.
Thank you for taking time to answer. I mistakenly omitted that my USB B is in fact Micro USB B!! The USB C socket works fine with my micro USB B hard drive. So I know that the USB C socket on the laptop works fine. It’s when I try USB C to my USB A 3.0 hard drive with my new cable that I have trouble . I don’t have a USB C mobile to test the cable the ‘other’ way. The drive works fine using USB A 3.0 to USB A 3.0
Thanks Mark
I believe your issue lies in the 5th pin that is different from a micro-usb and a usb-a. The drives need to be specified as to whether they are host or slave drives, without this data input they kind of float off into la-la land. The “ID” pin is what allows your usb-c to micro-usb dribe system to work. But with a usb-c to usb-a connection this “id” pin (or vConnect as labeled on the type c connection) it isnt connected, so you would have issues setting up the drive for operation. A phone would interface and allow you to pick its usage (media/charge only/etc.). You might be able to interface a hot swappable drive, but if you cannot get it into host or slave mode you would have issues.
Not all USBC leads are fast leads. That could be a prob.
I know sometimes you need a certain class of hdmi lead for it to work on TV from source… Maybe it’s the same with USBC… Has to be certain type/speed
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Thanks a lot