USB HDD Caddy Interferes with Adjacent USB Device

Recently bought a SATA to USB caddy to house my recently expired laptop's HDD. When I plug it in a USB port closely adjacent to a USB mouse dongle the mouse freezes or is sticky. When the mouse dongle is in a another further away port it is OK.

Trouble is that my lappy has only 3 USB ports, 2 tightly together on L and 1 isolated on R, and I occasionally need 3 USB devices, the HDD caddy, mouse dongle & flash drive. The ports on L are so close that, with the caddy's Type A USB plugged in, the thicker flash drive has no room to fit, only the dongle will.

The caddy contains electronic gubbins to convert SATA to USB (propriety) output from whence about a 18" cable goes to PC USB port.

Which bit is likely to be faulty?. It'll be either the USB cable/plug or the caddy's electronics; not the drive cuz that's works any way. I would put my money on the cable itself as the electronics would seem too far away.

Purely guessing, but it might be that the local internal power connections (serving the adjacent USB Ports) is a bit restricted!

Laptops are not usually designed with an abundance of spare power!

Perhpas put your USB stick on on one of these. I use them as my USB stick is to bulky to fit adjacent to another port.

Get a cheap powered hub. Then if you ever need 4 ports you'll be laughing.

In reply to a post by AEP:

Get a cheap powered hub. Then if you ever need 4 ports you'll be laughing.

Need a large glass for those

That's an idea! I forgot I had a long one of those from a Netgear USB Wireless Adapter. I'll give it a try. An even neater solution might be just a M to F Type A adapter w/out any cable. I've ordered 2 cheap ones.

What I really wanted to know was whether my newly bought caddy could be faulty.