On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:52:37 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


nestork wrote:

I just bought a solid state external hard drive, but the USB cable that
came with it is only about 1 foot long.

I have a USB cable that came with a digital camera I bought years ago
that works on the solid state hard drive, and I'd like to get another
like it so that I can keep the external hard drive plugged in, and plug
in my camera whenever I want. (Rather than unplug the hard drive
whenever I want to tranfer photos from the camera to my computer.)

The cable I have now has "cylinders" molded into the cable a few inches
from each end. I expect they clean up the signal or something. Does
anyone know what these "cylinders" are called and what they do?

The cable I have now has the following markings on it:
USB VER 2.0
28 AWG/1P
28 AWG/2C
TAIYO
2725
E176097
Underwriters Labs "Recognized Component" mark
AWM
80 deg. C
30 V
VW-1

I'd like to buy a similar quality cable. Since this cable came with a
digital camera, I'm wondering if the best place to buy really high
quality USB cables like this would be in a camera store. If someone is
paying $1500 for a really good camera, they're not going to cheap out on
the cables they use to upload their pictures onto their computer, right?


Wrong. There are junk cables, and really bad junk cables. Overpay
if you want to, but I rarely pay more than $1 for a USB cable and have
never found a bad cable. I've had soe really bad junk shipped with
items, though. One place I buy them is Dollar Tree. If I have time I'll
buy a batch on Ebay, or if I need a specail like the cables with two
"Type A" plugs to supply more current for an external drive

The A male to A female cables at Dollar Tree can't supply the current
necessary to transfer file from most digital cameras, power external
hard drives or power an usb wifi adapter. They work well with a mouse
or most thumb drives. Chuck