Power Supply for External SATA WD Drive

[Konstantyne]

I lost the power supply for my external hard drive during a move, and I'm unsure who the manufacturer is as there are no marking on the enclosure or stand. The drive inside is a WD10EACS (1TB SATA), so I'm not sure if I can use a standard power supply that Western Digital sells for their "My Book" products (or an equivalent 3rd party supply), or if the enclosure is going to affect the type of supply I need.

I have 10's of thousands of pictures of my kids on this drive, so I'm hesitant to try something I'm not sure of and risk losing the data, and I don't have a desktop system so I can't just pluck the drive out and pop it in a tower to save them.

If anyone can help me out with the best course of action to take with this I would really appreciate it.
Thanks!

[pcimage]

Should be fine to use a standard "my book" PSU.

[Nick_CT]

Whatever you do don't plug a 'universal laptop adapter' type thing into it. I got a WD external drive in today, lady had lost her power adapter for it so the local computer shop sold her a universal adapter and it blew the PCB.

[Konstantyne]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm definitely not going to use a universal adapter, I've heard too many horror stories myself. As for the My Book PSU, I'm thinking I should be fine with that as well but I'm not getting any response from WD about it. Here's hoping.

[Nick_CT]

Take pcimage's advice, the man knows what he's talking about.

[labtech]

An alternative is to buy an external enclosure or even a docking little USB adapter for drives. These are cheap and give you a lot of flexibility for back up drives.

[hddguy]

An alternative is to buy an external enclosure or even a docking little USB adapter for drives. These are cheap and give you a lot of flexibility for back up drives.

There is possibility that in this case the ops mybook uses Initio for encrypting so an alternative USB enclosure may not be possible.

[labtech]

True that hddguy, you are right.

Konstantyne, what is the model of the external written on the external casing? Should be located by the USB and power plugs.

[Konstantyne]

After a bit more research I determined that the enclosure was made by Comstar (EXOT-1TB-GM) and I have contacted their tech support (email only) regarding the missing PSU; no word back from them as yet. Thanks again for the advice everyone, I wasn't even aware of those USB adapters for HDD's, that's actually a really attractive alternative that I may pursue if this doesn't pan out.