IDE HDD slave to laptop; need HDD enclosure?

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

Hello there, I have some weird issues with my desktop (i may post about it if this doesn't work), but first I want to run scans for viruses, spyware, and other malware; I'm pretty sure a full reformat and restore could fix it, but it's a 160 GB HDD, my 500 GB external is practically full, so I'm trying to avoid a reformat. I can't do such scans however, because one of issues is random crashing, especially anything that uses computer resources for a good while (ie, scans)

So of course I want to take the HDD out and put as a slave to another computer. I only have laptops to use for this, however. I've never even opened up a laptop; I know how to do this with another desktop with IDE though, but no idea about laptops; different cables anyway, as far as I know.

1st Q:
From what little i could find online, and what a guy at Circuit City told me, it is practically impossible? I thought I found sometihng online that metioned an adaptor cable (something about 40 pin to 44 pin), but I cannot find that page anymore. Is there a way to do it through a cable like this?

2nd Q:
Is an HDD encloser a better / only choice? If so, I need some help picking one. Although Circuit City had one for $40, I've seen HDD enclosures for much less; 15 - 20 dollars. However, the ones i've found so far online are these brands I've never heard of before, so I have no idea what to go for. I don't need anything that's over the top, or with best cooling....it's only for temporary tihngs like this, and even if in the future I'll want to use this old HDD, it's the an IDE, 7200 (i think) rpm, so, nothing special; it's the original.

Desktop is a Sony VAIO PCV-RS 520, about 6 years old; Laptop is HP Pavillion tx1120us Entertainment Notebook, 2 years old.

Thanks, hope someone can help me out here Smile

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2380

Hard drive enclosure is certainly more useful and easier to set up. No software, just plug it in the USB port and the notebook will see it.

I bought a never heard of brand BYTECC and it has served me well for years. I got a 5 1/2" size beause I switch between hard drives and CD or DVD burners.
Since it is an internal desktop drive, you want a 3.5" enclosure. I also think you need one with external power. The USB ports in a laptop might not be powerful enough and the enclosure will have a fan to keep the drive cool.http
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145378
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817716010
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145398
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817193022
possible options. The first link had the highest rating.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

Hello, and Welcome!

Almost any question you could ask has already been covered here in the LG Forums over the past years. External enclosures has been well addressed.

But for a quick hookup of any kind of drive (desktop, laptop or SATA) to any computer via a USB cable, the little Gadget that I just wrote about recently would probably be your best bet. Read all about it Here!

I paid a premium price for mine, but have found similar devices advertised for as low as $14.95.
I think 'ZLim' showed a picture of one in the same thread for $9.95.

Of course, if you want something more permanent, an enclosure would be your best bet. I have two of them, both from "AirLink 101".
One is for the laptop drives and the second one is for the big desktop drives. Both take only IDE drives.
I think I paid $19.95 for the little one and $29.95 for the bigger one.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!
The Doctor Cool

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

Sorry if this has been covered before. I did search before even registering though, but I only searched this forum, so maybe that was it.

Apparently I need to rush making a decision like this. Even thought the past few days the comptuer has been relatively stable, I've tried starting up almost 10 times and it keeps saying it can't load the profile due to not finding in registry, or file not in registry format, or not enough resources.... so it loads a "default" profile. What say you gnomies? Reformat unavoidable? <.< sounds like it...

Either way, if I can't log in properly, then I may have to take out the HDD even for the data transfer. So yeah, gotta figure this out. The profiles on this computer are set to the private setting (not necessary anymore, but I had it like to prevent tampering from my then much younger little brother lol). I forgot where that was, how do I change that?

Ok, so, I have the choice of buying an enclosure, or getting those cables which also end in USB. So a few more Q's, since I might as well plan for the future if i'm going to buy something:

CABLES: I'm looking at the kit at buy.com that zlim psoted about in the other topic. This one. Will this allow me to connect any HDD by USB then? am I correct in interpreting from the pictures that one end of the cable has ports for SATA, IDE, and the other side looks like IDE, is that the 44-pin laptop IDE? Does that cover all the interfaces? finally, according to the description, i can also use it for things like DVD drives? I see in the pictures the cable with one end black, one end white, 4 colored cables in between... I forgot what that cable is exactly; where would that go? DrWho's pic has it connected to...nothing. (Been a while since I've had to do this sort of thing so I'm rusty on what each cable was)

ENCLOSURES: More expensive, but are they generally specific to one type of connector unless it's one of those bigger, more expensive ones? Also, if I were to keep using an HDD with the cabes, it wouldn't be bad, would it? If it's in open air they don't need fans, do they; it's just if they're in an enclosed space?

So, even looking to the future, and planning for the possible situation when the desktop will die and I'll want to keep the HDD, would I want an enclosure, or will the cables do just fine?

Thank you for the great answers so far. Smile

I know there's a lot of questions up there, i hope you can answer as much as you can; even the more specific ones because well, I need to know and understand these things too. Wink

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

The adapter I was showing comes in a KIT....
In the kit is the USB to Drive cable, with YES a large IDE connector and a small (laptop) connector and a SATA connector. So that about covers it.
YES, I can see no reason why you couldn't also connect a CD/DVD drive, something you can't do in an IDE external drive enclosure.

When running any drive (3.5" IDE or CD/DVD) on an external adapter, you need to set the drive jumpers to "Master".
There is NO jumper on laptop IDE drives.

The laptop drives draw very little current and are powered off of the USB cable. However the larger desktop drives require both 5v and 12v, so the KIT provides a separate power supply for those drives.
(it looks just like the AC power supply for a laptop computer)

I just run an extended power lead from my computer for the big drives, instead of hooking up that external power supply.
Less wires on the computer bench that way.

But the supply is included in the kit, if you want to or need to use it.
Everything is included.....nothing extra to buy.

This is probably the most useful adapter I've ever purchased. I'm now wondering how I ever got along without it.
(I did lots of 'Jury Rigging' I guess. Confused

)

Good Luck,
The Doctor Cool

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

Sounds good! Very Happy

So these cables seem like a better (and cheaper) choice, then?

There were still some other questions but think the important things left I really need to be sure about is, even if I keep an HDD relatively "permanent" like that, I don't fans is it's out in the open air?

The cable made up of 4 rounded cables, with one end white and the other black.. what is it and where does that go to?

finally, if I ever need to work with a laptop drive, how come it doesn't have a master/slave setting? Is that like automaticaly (and hopefully, correctly) determined?

goretsky

Hello,

Based on the symptoms you have reported, it sounds like you could be dealing with a computer which is overheating, a hard disk drive that has begun to fail, or both. Have you looked into troubleshooting either of these conditions?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

I doubt it's an overheat, because crashes can and have happened anytime, even if it's the first time i turn it on in the morning, etc. If anything close to that, I thought maybe it could be a power supply issue, but I haven't really looked into it. Since the problems started the same time, I really thought it was more of some sort of virus or maybe hard drive failure.

The reason i didn't think much of hard drive failure was because i had no problems or werid errors with applications. At first the errors were only missing dlls (but dlls that shouldn't exist in the first place as i found ZERO results in google search, and they lookedl ike random letters anyway). And then recently, a few programs reproted errors loading certain files on startup. Registry problems?

Now I'm have this issue of problems with my profile supposed due to issues in the registry. Now is it a Hard Drive probem? I'm not sure... it's weird that only now it's happening like this. Furthermore, I checked the 4 other user profiles on this computer. The other one that was occasionally used loaded fine, except it also had the weird dll errors show up. The other two profiles were rarely used, are pretty much stil have everything set as default, and that one had no problems too.

so you see, it feels like my profile was targeted specificaly, which is why i've always had the malware suspicion. Right now I'm going to test a weird little theory my brother suggested: I've only been trying to log in to my profile. What if I try I scan fromh is profile? Will it still crash? if it's a hardware problem it should but, what it's software/virus or maybe yes, HDD/registry? I'm going to do that now and see if it crashes or not.....

Those are all just what I thought, i'm not as big an expert on these things as your guys are i'm sure, so i could have been wrong on some of those assumptions. What I've really been wanting to do is get scans done, and due to school mostly, haven't had time to look into it before, till now... only to realize I don't know how to do it on a laptop, and thus, this topic.

btw, unless you guys have other comments and answers (I hope so cause I still want to know some things there just to have that knowledge Razz

), I want to make sure i won't need a fan for the HDD.

and unless someone says otherwise, seems to me the cables are the best choice, right? So I guess I'll go buy that now? Smile

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

Random crashes could certainly be the power supply! Idea

But if you suspect malware, then why put the drive on another PC right off the bat? Download and install the Malware removing software on that drive and run the scans right there. I do that almost every day in my computer business.
I carry all my security software (very latest versions) on my Utilities CD. I just install it, get the updates and run the scans.

You can even go into ADD/Remove programs in the control panel and look down the list and spot many titles of malware. I found "My Web Search" on a customers PC just yesterday. I de-installed it, but when I ran "Hazard Shield" it found and removed four registry entries left over from "My Web Search".

Whatever......it's up to you to do it the way you feel most comfortable with.

About your question as to why laptop HD's don't have jumpers.
Since the first laptop was sold, they have only one drive. That's the way they are built. So NO jumper is needed. The connector on the end of the drive is smaller than the desktop IDE drives and also supplies 5v to the drive. Except for an external USB device of some kind, (like the one I showed you) there is NO way to connect a desktop IDE drive to a laptop.

But, to use a laptop drive, a desktop drive and a CD drive you would need three External Enclosures, totaling amost $100. The little gizmo is a lot cheaper for temporary hook-ups.

Like I said already, I don't know how I ever got along without mine.

If you don't already have a good 'package' of anti-malware software, you can get my own list, including URL's, Here.

At one time or another, I use every program in that list to clean up a badly infected PC and then Protect it from future infection.
I do this stuff for a living and have for 28 years.

Good Luck,
The Doctor Cool

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

Not sure if I said it before but I can't run scans because the computer crashes before it's done. The longest AVG was able to run was 8 hours but it still wasn't done.

So I plan on connecting it to the laptop and just scan it; not copy or run anything from it yet.

I also finished my test. Strangely enough, AVG claims to have finished a FULL scan of all 680+ GB on the desktop in under 3 hours. Strange when it would go for 8 hours before, I don't know which is the weird number; 3 hours or 8?? Confused

It did still crash on the other user profiles, but they WERE more stable. Running my profile,apparently something was going on there and was making the computer very unstable.

and thanks for the list there. I have most of that, and more, but it's got some things i might try out too. I also have Bazooka spyware scanner, which i usually use a last resort thing; when spybot,adaware, etc remove everythign, bazooka MAY still find the remaining unremovable stuff, and provide the instructions for manual removal.

And yes i have look through Add/Remove; any bad programs that were there were removed long ago and right now the list looks fine.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with connecting the HD to scan it like I said?

Thanks a lot for the all the help. I'm going to buy that cable kit then. Smile

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

There's NO WAY in Hxxx that I'd ever have that much stuff on C:.!!!

And I'll bet you've got thousands of "Unnecessary files" on that drive.
The "Unnecessary Files Removal" routine in "Easy Cleaner 2" will take care of that problem for you.
Just run the program, select Unnecessary file removal and you'll see this screen. Select the drive and the objects you want to remove. In this picture I've selected everything. Click FIND to list all the bad files.
Then after the scan is complete, select "Delete All" at the bottom of the screen. During the scan, a totalizer will record the number of megabytes and the number of files will show at the end of the scan.

<<-- click to expand

Good Luck,
Doc

PS: If all else fails, get a massage! Laughing

goretsky

Hello,

Bear in mind that other parts of the computer can overheat and cause a system to crash, such as a hard disk drive, optical disc drive or video card, not just the CPU or other motherboard components.

When a hard disk drive overheats, it is possible for there to be data corruption issues before a system crash.

Have you tested the hard disk drive for errors using the manufacturer's diagnostic software? If so, were any problems found?

You may not need to install a fan to help cool down the hard disk drive. Moving other drives away from it may be sufficient to reduce its operating temperature. Also, given the age of the computer, perhaps the fans need to be cleaned or replaced. As they age, fans become less efficient due to wear on their motors.

Randomly-named DLL files are often associated with malware infections, so you could either be dealing with an active infection, or the aftermath of an infestation that was removed. Did you ever have a problem with malicious software on the computer? And, if so, what steps were taken to remedy it?

The advantage to removing the suspect hard disk drive and checking it for malware from a known-clean computer is that the anti-malware software can check objects on the disk without interference from the malware, which could be trying to do things like close, disable or otherwise interfere with the anti-malware software, or redirect attempts to access files or other affected objects by redirecting them to "clean" copies; this type behavior is called "stealthing" and is often used by rootkits to hinder detection and removal of malicious code from an infected system.

I think that 2.5" PATA hard disk drives do have jumpers, but normally they are not used since hard disk drives in notebook computers typically only have one device (the hard disk drive) on the primary PATA channel. I once helped a co-worker copy some data off an old Hewlett-Packard or Compaq notebook computer which had its 2.5" hard disk drive jumpered for Cable-Select. He was rather confused because I had given him an external hard disk drive enclosure to mount the hard disk drive in, and could not figure out why the hard disk drive did not line up flush against the PATA connector on its logic board. Removing the jumper resolved the problem, but neither of us had bothered to look at the hard disk drive connectors first because we had never seen a 2.5" PATA hard disk drive come out of a notebook with a jumper installed on it.

I do not have any 2.5" SATA hard disk drives in front of me, but I would not be surprised if some of them had jumpers as well to toggle between SATA and SATA II modes.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

Yeah, I wasn't very explanatory with my statement:
There's NO WAY in Hxxx that I'd ever have that much stuff on C:.!!!

But I did say C:.....not D:, E:, F:, etc.

I see people that set up huge HD's as one big partition, with everything they own on it. All scans for malware, a Chkdsk or Defrag take like forever. Wasteful of both time and effort.

When I started building PC's, way back in the very early 80's, a 20 meg hard drive was king. Thirty megs was a luxury and anything bigger, if you could fine one, was out of the price range of most hard working stiffs like me.

It was years, before HD technology got to IDE drives with gigabytes of space instead of megabytes, that were cheap enough for regular folks to afford them. Up till then, partitioning wasn't even thought of. Many users just had two HD's. One for the OS and a few programs and the other for file storage. Computers still had 5.25" floppy drives.

That was then, this is now, with HD's up in the terabyte range.

For many years now, I've always set up my IDE drives with two partitions.
The first one in the 20 gig range for 98, ME or XP and 40 gigs for Vista.
The balance of the space on the drive I set up as a big storage partition and I use folders to separate data, instead of creating additional partitions.
Having too many partitions can make drive maintenance and backups a nightmare.

I scan C: regularly (at least weekly) for malware, then remove all the garbage files and then defrag it. Then I make a Ghost backup Image of it and save that image to a second HD, or DVD. I can still get a Ghost Image of my C: partition on a six gig flash drive, using Ghosts High Compression mode.
That doesn't come easy.....it requires a high degree of HD maintenance.

I do scans and defragmentation on D: at a much greater interval, usually once a month.

Scans of my C: drive would never take over 20 minutes or so and a full backup on my C: drive takes only six minutes.

Generally speaking, any HD is the worlds worse place to store data.
It's a fast moving mechanical device that generates a large amount of heat and friction and will eventually fail......not a mater of IF, but WHEN. It's like a light bulb....you turn it on one day and POOOOF! it's gone, and all your info right along with it.

I've worked in main-frame data centers where all their hard drive data is backed up to tape, DAILY. Too bad more PC users don't do data backups on a regular basis.

Have I explained my statement satisfactorily? Gads, I hope so. Wink

I do so hate to be misunderstood. Crying or Very sad

Finis

The Doctor Cool

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

Ah, I gotcha now, good dcotor. So 8 hours for a virus scan doesn't sound too crazy?

And yes, i'm one of those who's now got this 500GB HDD and it's got much of my stuff in it, but relatively new, so it shoudln't fail soon. I do regular backups as well, and my most important, irreplacable files, such as my music projects, scifi novels, and other personal stuff like that, I've also uploaded to online storage, regularly updated.

I don't understand why people seem, I don't know, maybe too lazy to do backups? They can be very simple. I use a free program called SyncBack, and it just does everything automatically. The less importat things I may do manually, it's just drag and copy. Maybe the problem is that many people don't have good organization with folders so it's hard for them?

I'm definitely big on folders too; keeps things organized. Other people may find my "system" in some place confusing though. for example, I have 5 different folders for regular, miscellaneous downloads (such as programs, skins, etc) for that dont go into the other "my" folders, across 2 computers and the 500GB external hard drive.

Downloaded FIles
New Downloads to install
NEW Downloaded files
Sp3ctre18\Downloads
Documents\Downloads

And somehow I always remember where to look for something. I just remember cause of time differences and maybe content. First one is the ancient one, all the old stuff is there. 2nd one was my old, common downloads folder which started out as being only for recent stuff, but then became the new default one. NEW downloaded files is on the External drive. Downloads is on the laptop, and Documents\downloads is on laptop for files over 2GB.

I also have 3 My Documents folders, 2 my pictures, 4 main music folders... lol. Of coursei t's just because of working with them over I time I just remember.

There was a time my pictures folder was just a dump and never organized it. It was full of folders called "New 1" "New 2" etc, and each one may have had it's own big set of "new 1" "new 2"... with a few of them having a few other "New" folders in it, and I usually remembered "oh, that sound barrier cloud picture is in my pictures\new 5\new 8\new 1." hehe, i still remember that one. Eventually I organized everything properly. Razz

goretsky

Hello,

The amount of time it takes to scan a drive for malware is going to vary based on the capabilities of the computer running the scan, the settings chosen for the anti-malware program, the particular database of signatures it is using to detect malware, the content of the files being scanned and so forth. Small things like the operating system or an application checking for updates, or the anti-malware program downloading new signatures skews the results. That is why when testing anti-malware software, one ends up having to do things like repeat the test a number of times, drop the slowest score and average the results. I would imagine 680GB of text files would be scanned much more quickly than, say, 680GB of .ZIPped or .RARed archive files, each filled with executable programs packed with PECompact, PKLite, UPX and so forth.

SONY may have a system diagnostics program which allows you test the various components of the computer, including the hard disk drive, available for download on their web site, but I was thinking more along the lines of visiting the support web site of the actual hard disk drive manufacturer and seeing what tools they have available.

If you do not know the brand of hard disk drive installed in your computer, you can determine it by running the Disk Management program (filename: DISKMGMT.MSC, clicking on the disk drive listed in the bottom half of the window (typically labeled Disk 0) and viewing its Properties. At the top of the General tab, the brand and model (or possibly just the model) of the hard disk drive will be displayed. In the event it is just the model number, typing that into your favorite search engine will reveal the manufacturer. Once at the manufacturer's web site, look in their support section for diagnostic utility software you can download and run to test the hard disk drive.

Note that a number of diagnostics offer to perform both destructive (data-erasing) and non-destructive types of tests. Only perform non-destructive types of tests, otherwise you will erase your hard disk drive.

If you have been having the problem for over a year, perhaps it is time to buy a new internal hard disk drive for your SONY desktop computer, use your recovery CDs to reinstall the operating system and then reload your software from its installation media, some security software, get everything patched and updated, and then copy over your original data from the original hard disk drive, which is now connected via an external enclosure or cable.

While this is an expensive process (both in terms of money and time) it is the best way to guarantee you a working computer environment, especially considering how long this has been going on.

It seems like you have installed multiple security software applications (Kasperksy, Sygate and Symantec) as well as peer-to-peer file transfer software (PeerGuardian). I would suggest picking one set of security tools to use--if you are selecting different products from different vendors, verify they are compatible with each other, beforehand--and do not install or otherwise use peer-to-peer file transfer software on the computer to prevent problems in the future.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

It sounds like you've got a better handle on things than was originally indicated.

But just saying that a drive is "New" doesn't make it any more reliable than one that's six years old.
I just refurbished a PC that I built in 2000 and put Windows ME on.
It's still using the original mobo, cpu and yes, hard drive.
I've upgraded the PSU, ram and CD drive (to a DVD burner) and installed Windows XP on it. It's no speed demon, but otherwise runs great.

On the other side of the coin, I replaced three WD drives in just one summer, all in the same PC. The last WD was replaced with a Maxtor.
The WD's were dying of heat exhaustion!

I replace so many drives that are still in warranty, that I'm very familiar with the RMA process for each company and have shortcuts to their RMA request pages. Wink

So just the fact that a HD doesn't have a long white beard, doesn't mean it won't crash. Backup! Backup! Backup!

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Doctor Cool

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

hehe, yep, i understand what you mean about the HDDs. Very Happy

Anyway, I'm back, with news. I've got the cable, took off the cover of my desktop, didn't take out the hard drive (screws seem to be in places impossible to reach anyway), i unplugged it from all the cables inside the computer, removed the jumper (it's a seagate; website said no jumper means slave setting), connected the adaptor onto it, then the power, a little spark when plugging into outlet (i guess cause there's no swtich), then plugged USB to computer.

Well, it won't recognize it. My computer has vista btw, so let me know if you guys have used it on Vista; after this i'm going to try on my brother's school laptop which has XP Pro.

When I plug it in, it gives me a message as shown below, and when i click the message, it shows up as unknown device, as shown below.

<<-- click to expand

I know it's a usb cable, but just in case the HDD was acting as a typical IDE, I powered down the laptop and tried connecting it while it was off, and then turned on computer. Computer didn't recognize it all, didn't even sohw a message... just totally ignore or didn't see the connected drive. So i unplugged it, and conencted it to another port. I thought it was working!! It found the new hardware, started installing it the driver, finishes, and said it was done and ready for use. A few second later, I get the malfunction bubble error again. -.-

in other news, the only other stuff I did with the drive, was I downloaded seagate's diagnstic tool and made a bootable floppy from it. The short scan (took like a minute) found nothing wrong, so then I ran the long scan, which it said averages 2 - 3 hous. it wasn't even an hour in and the computer just, shut off. The next day was when I opened up the case, brought in the vacuum cleaner and cleaned all the dust... there wasn't that much in the fans and vents actually, and most of the dust was settles at the bottom, but I guess moves around when the compter is on. All cables were tight. Since I now had the ide/sats-usb cables, I decided to not waste time and go ahead with that. Sometime afterwards, I'll try booting it up again, and I'm sure I have some programs that can watch the internal heat, so I'll see what that tells me; maybe the temperature goes up before it crashes.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1000 Location: Central FL, USA

I think I mentioned someplace, maybe in this thread and maybe not, that IDE drives are NOT HOT Swappable. They only initialize on system power up.

A spark? DO NOT connect or disconnect power cables in the PC with power on. Many times that will jolt the PSU and cause it to do an emergency shutdown.

Pull the AC power plug out of the back of the PC if you have to, to make sure that the PC is DEAD and there is NO power on the power plug when you plug it into a drive.
Next, any IDE drive on an adapter cable or in an External Enclosure must be jumpered as "MASTER".....NOT Slave.

When you power up the system with your IDE drive properly jumpered and plugged, it will initialize just like any internal drive would do.

Comprende Senior?

Doc Cool

Sp3ctre18 · Joined: May 15, 2008 Posts: 27

oh, so it had to be set as a master? I guess that might be doing it...

and yes, it was in this topic that you said IDE drives are not hot swappable and I know that. The spark is coming from the power cable directly connected to the HDD. The HDD is not connected to the power supply or anyting else int he PC except for the IDE-USB cable, which is disconnected. The PC is off, the power plug disconnected.

Apparently, the HDD retains some electricity in itself after being disconnected? I just hope that spark doesn't mean the HDD could be damaged.