Review by Robert Kosinski for BENCH TOP PC COMPUTER POWER SUPPLY ADAPTER 12V 5A 5v 2A 60 WATTS MOLEX
Rating:
Most 12v/5v power supplies carry a maximum of 2 amps on the 12 volt side. This is more than enough to power virtually any modern hard drive during its steady state operation, but some require more than that to spin up. If you use with any frequency the USB hard drive adapters meant to accompany this product, then you’ll eventually encounter such a case, which is evidenced by a disturbing clicking noise not dissimilar from a truly finished hard drive. This 5A power supply is the only one I found that carries more than 2 amps on the 12V side, which is more than enough to handle your run-of-the-mill consumer level device. Now whether it’ll power on a five platter Barracuda…you’re on your own with that.

Consider the five star rating provisional. If it continues to work as-is then the rating stands. However, these things tend to start failing after a year or two, which isn’t surprising due to their ordinarily cheap construction. This one seems sturdier than average, however, both in weight and quality of plastic casing. I’ve opened packages where the “clam shell” casing had detached during shipping or warehousing, though actually seeing what goes on electronically in modern power supplies is far more worrisome than whatever happens with the cosmetic housing. The included power cord is of the thicker variety usually seen with PCs rather than the thinner, cheaper kind usually shipped with these. Also included is a velcro strap, which is a nice touch. The informational sticker includes the distributor’s website, which could come in handy if you forgot where it came from or it gets delisted from Amazon.

Note that like most (all?) of these, this power adapter lacks a 3.3V line, but I’ve never seen a case where it was necessary. If you somehow do need this or just don’t want to be bothered purchasing something like this, a regular old PC power supply will naturally power the hard drive, but, unfortunately, this means soldering or splicing a power switch or “hotwiring” an ATX supply, but, if you can find one, AT supplies have the switch built in. What you gain in budget and/or ingenuity you’ll lose in portability, aesthetics, power consumption, and noise level, however.

Given that this particular supply seems to offer a premium at virtually the same price others are sold, this purchase seems like a no-brainer. The downside, however, is that you’ve probably doubled your cost for the function and now have an extra brick lying around. Personally, I use the old supply to power a drive with known low power consumption. It functions as a “bare” fixed file repository accessed via ESATA -> SATA cable. Enclosures just add heat and don’t do anything meaningful to absorb shock, so why not?

Unfortunately, I have not found a reliable method to anticipate which hard drives require more than 2A current. Many three platter drives power on fine within the limit, but I have a single platter drive that does not. While SATA drives supposedly consume less power than their IDE ancestors, this doesn’t seem to offer any guarantees. The ratings manufacturers publish refer to steady state operation, not spin up. Off the record, in limited testing, Seagate seems to have the most difficulty spinning up, but I have a disproportionate number of Seagate drives in my sample set so that skews my observation. Western Digital Green drives seem best of breed in this regard. The intarwebs say it can accomplish spin up with a mere 1.8 amps, which is nearly an entire amp less than the average, which seems to be in the 2.4-2.8 range.