Thursday, June 19, 2014

Replacement power supply unit for Seagate 5.35'' external HDD


I am posting this here as anyone who is having the same problem, need not travel down the same road as me. Recently the power supply unit (power adaptor) of my Seagate 1TB external HDD which I use for backups went of with a bang (literally). The specs of this unit is
Input.
100-240v 50-60Hz 0.5A Max.
Output.
12v 1.5A

First went to the Seagate website to look for the service centers in my city. I could not find any mention of service centers but I found the toll free numbers as well as the contact details of their distributors (most also act as service centers for many companies). My HDD is NOT in warranty & I wanted to purchase the power supply unit.
The first day I tried to contact Seagate  could not get thru so  tried the distributors number after spending a lot of time I managed to get thru on one number but was told to contact the Seagate HDD section on another number which was always engaged for TWO full days, so I could not get thru. An email to the distributor has till date got me no reply. Then I tried the phone of the retailer who sold me this unit who bluntly told me not to waste my time either with the company or the distributor as they would not entertain my request to purchase a power unit for my ext HDD and to buy an equivalent unit from the open market.
I then contacted Seagate on twitter who told me to buy an equivalent unit from the open market or online sites. To their credit Seagate did tried to help but it was too much of a hassle for me. Before going out to the electronic parts shops in my city for this unit I tried ebay.in where i found that the Airtel DTH standard set top box power unit specs match the power unit of my ext HDD. Since I had a TATA Sky DTH standard set top box at home, I checked the specs of its power supply unit & found that it too matched the specs of what I wanted. So I am now running the Seagate external 5.35’’ HDD on a TATA Sky DTH standard set top box power supply unit.