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I have a Western Digital external hard drive that uses a power adapter to 12v and 1.5A, and it stopped working. I tried it with a tester and doesn't output any current at all.
Can I replace it with other adapter that is 1A? would that ruin the disk? would this work?

edit: The disk is a Western Digital 1TB ( model WDBACW0010HBK-01 )
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=240
http://wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=886

It doesn't seem to show anything about current requirements here.

Petruza
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2 Answers2

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No, a 1A power supply isn't a replacement for a 1.5A power supply. It might work if the disk actually takes less than 1A and the power supply was sized with some margin. However, these high volume items are are usually trimmed to the bone, so probably not.

You can use a 12V supply with a higher current rating, but not a lower one. The device will only draw the current it wants, but the supply has to able to put out the maximum current the device wants. Since that may be in the 1-1.5 Amp range, the 1A supply is not good enough.

The 1A supply probably won't cause any damage. If the device tries to draw more current than it can provide, the voltage will collapse or it will deliberately shut down. Shutting down clearly can't hurt the device. Having a partway voltage for extended periods of time could possibly be bad, but that's rather unlikely. Of course the device won't work right with the partial voltage. It might not tell you about it and just mess up occasionally.

Olin Lathrop
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It depends on the current requirements of the hard drive. These should be found on the drive itself or in it's documentation.
If it requires less than 1A, using the new 12V/1A adaptor may be okay. If more than 1A then no.

Basically, whatever adaptor you use has to be rated for more current than the hard drive requires.

If you run it from an adaptor with too low a current rating, it is very unlikely to harm it, it will probably just not work reliably. Current requirements rise and fall depending on what it's doing so this would be intermittent, you can't just plug it in and see if it "works".

If you mention the model number a definite answer can be given.

Oli Glaser
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