Power brick question

[rivan]

I've got a bunch of external drives I'm trying to use, and don't have correct power supplies for all the drives.

However, I have other power supplies that use the same plug type (similar to a PS/2 connection, except that there are 5 pins, not 6).

The output voltages are the same on both bricks +5v and +12v but the amperages are higher on the spares I have - 1.5A on both, and the bricks I'm short on say 1.0A +5V and .75A +12V.

If I use the higher-amperage power supplies on the drives, will I fry them?

 

[imagoon]

Higher amperage won't fry anything. I would be more worried that the pins are not in the correct order and sending 12 volts in to the 5v / ground and otherwise letting the magic smoke out.

 

[Blain]

Make sure the polarity is correct on the pins.

 

[rivan]

I'll verify the voltage layout.

I've also found a couple rated for LOWER amperage than the correct bricks. I assume they'd be ok, though I may burn out the underrated supply?

Here's a pic of the project, for the laughs. These are all DVD-RAM drives, circa 2001/2. I've got a couple hundred double-sided disks I need to pull the data from, and they're VERY slow.

 

[mfenn]

I'll verify the voltage layout.

I've also found a couple rated for LOWER amperage than the correct bricks. I assume they'd be ok, though I may burn out the underrated supply?

Here's a pic of the project, for the laughs. These are all DVD-RAM drives, circa 2001/2. I've got a couple hundred double-sided disks I need to pull the data from, and they're VERY slow.

Wow, I feel sorry for you. That looks like an incredible amount of fun.

As for using a lower rated supply: best case, it won't work at all; worst case, it works but the power supply runs hot and/or explodes. Or maybe I got those the wrong way around?

 

[imagoon]

Is that like... one of those projects where you have 2000 disks so hit up ebay for "bulk pack of 10 DVD-RAM drives" for $1 to move it all to different storage?

 

[rivan]

Yep, except we had all those drives in a storage closet. There are another half dozen to the left of the shot. The real suckfest? They're all like 1x and 2x drives or something - each side of those takes ~40 minutes to copy.

Pop in 5 disks, hope none are corrupt because it crashes the finder, start copying, walk away.

 

[imagoon]

Yep, except we had all those drives in a storage closet. There are another half dozen to the left of the shot. The real suckfest? They're all like 1x and 2x drives or something - each side of those takes ~40 minutes to copy.

Pop in 5 disks, hope none are corrupt because it crashes the finder, start copying, walk away.

I wonder if you would have better luck using the BSD terminal to prevent crashes. Terminal based copy should have extra options like continue on fail etc.

 

[mfenn]

I wonder if you would have better luck using the BSD terminal to prevent crashes. Terminal based copy should have extra options like continue on fail etc.

I agree that some sort of command-line copying tool will work better than trying to use a relatively heavy GUI tool like Finder. Good ol' cp will indeed continue on to the next file if it encounters any I/O errors.

 

[rivan]

I'll start using terminal for the copies, though some of the pathnames are PITA.

I'm stuck with just 5 drives to copy ~1200 double-sided disks - is there somewhere I can order a few more power supplies from at non-astronomical prices?

 

[imagoon]

Do you have a part number?

 

[rivan]

DA-30C01

Is it really as simple as getting them from Amazon? I'd have thought, as old as the power supply is, the part number wouldn't mean anything to the internet.

 

[imagoon]

Seems common enough. Amazon has a ton listed at $15.

 

[mfenn]

I'll start using terminal for the copies, though some of the pathnames are PITA.

cp -r /Volumes/<volume_name> <dest>

Also, Tab completion is your friend.

 

[rivan]

So, I'm well into this file transfer project. 20 or so TB of files going to another company. I recently ran out of FireWire drives; asked IT for more, here's what I got.

We're almost all Mac here; the newest machines are about 18 months old. As far as I'm aware, there's no USB3 in the house.

 

[mfenn]

Rip it open and plug it directly with SATA?

 

[Vinwiesel]

Is 3.0 necessary? Should be backwards compatible with 2.0, you'll just be getting about half the speed.

 

[rivan]

Rip it open and plug it directly with SATA?

That was my first thought.

Is 3.0 necessary? Should be backwards compatible with 2.0, you'll just be getting about half the speed.

Necessary? Not really. But have you ever copies terabytes of data over USB2?

I'm just whining at this point - though I do bill by the hour