On Friday, 03 September, 2010 @18:38 zulu, Ankur Sinha scribed:
I'll connect it to a windows machine someplace and check. I have a feeling the SATA to USB thing *may* be the culprit too.
Being an electrician, I would suspect the exceedingly cheap (yet quite efficient and about zero phantom load, unlike the heavy wall wart types) switching power bricks that come with such adapters.
So, try a different power supply. e.g. you can connect the drive to a computer's power supply and still use the USB to SATA adapter to see if the black brick's the problem.