Power supplies for external hard drives

[Stephen Barrow]

Greetings!

The 12 volt 1,5 amp power supplies for both my 3 Tb Western Digital My Book Essential and 4 Tb Seagate Expansion Desktop Drive external drives have packed up. I am finding it difficult to source reliable / quality switching power supplies of 1,5 - 2 amp rating, which have the correct plugs for the drives. I have three questions:

1. Does anyone know where I can buy reliable (not Chinese...?) new power supplies from? How does one specify the plugs as I live in a rural area so will have to purchase online.

2. Can a use a desktop computer power supply? As far as I know these power supplies deliver different volts (-5, 5 12), so one has to make sure of using the correct leads. There is also the need to briefly short two of the leads (which?) to switch the power supply on.

3. Alternatively, can I power the drives directly from a 12 volt battery, such as a car battery or 12 volt solar battery? This will be useful when using both drives at the same time with my laptop, as the 3 Tb is the backup for the 4 Tb drive. I know that the battery must not be charged while powering the hard drives due to possible spikes while being charged.

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[ponder]

Any 12V switching PS will work. So you can buy any psu with sufficient current rating and just connect the existing cables via a connector or soldering.

 

[airborne]

Get an old Xbox 360 Fat power supply, 12v at I think 14A, legend supplies and very well made.

You can get 12V supplies from many sources and then just cut the plugs off the old power supplies and connect them to the new ones, easy enough job.

Drop me a pm, I should be able to source you some decent 12v power supplies and courier them to you, courier is around R120 + cost of the supplies.

 

[Stephen Barrow]

Thank you Ponder and Airborne for your replies and advice.