External Hard Drives and Inverters

[pseudo]

What's the general consensus? Is pure sine a must for sensitive things like HDDs?

 

[blars]

Hard drives run on DC, so it depends on the power supply. Most can handle modified sine fine, but some can't.

 

[caseyc]

Ummmmmmm. Yes!

 

[Willy]

Never had any problems with my modified sine wave setup. Going to get a pure sine inverter one of these days anyway, since some of my audio stuff gets that annoying 60 Hz buzz. Problem is finding a small pure sine inverter at a reasonable price. Too many of the inverters are larger, with too much standby power draw. This matters little in the summer, but can be problematic in the winter. ..Willy.

 

[SternWake]

One could make the argument that with all the important data stored on a hard drive, why take the chance?


But I have no idea if MSW will actually hurt it.

My older laptop worked fine on a MSW, but would slow down considerably when the internal battery was fully recharged. The MSW ruined 2 power tool battery chargers too, but I knew it was a possibility, and the batteries were on their last legs anyway, and of course 2 new batteries cost more than a new tool, so ruining the charger was not too much of a concern.

I recently acquired a 400 watt Wagan Elite el2601 PSW inverter. Nice small physical size, and the fan only becomes audible at around the 200 watt zone. Anything less and it is silent, which is a big plus

Standby current is the 0.3 to 0.4a range which is less than half my coleman 800 watt MSW

 

[caseyc]

Well, think of it this way. It costs "$X" amount extra for a pure sine wave inverter. If your hard drive or external drive were to get fried, what would that $X amount be worth to you in the case of a total loss?? If you're storing stuff that has little worth, then by all means take a chance. But if you're storing information that is invaluable and nearly impossible to recover, that would be another matter.

 

[Pikachu711]

I have a few of those external drives. Those are very good for storing a great deal of items from documents, photographs, etc. as well as other forms of media. When my nephew was in the US Army he was assigned to a Forward Operating Base (FOB). He brought almost all his favorite movies with him to make the time pass a little easier when he wasn't on duty.

I currently have two 40GB hard drives that I store various items on as a backup to my computers. Having some type of external drive (or two) makes a great deal of sense. You won't regret have some type of external drive which contains copies of important items stored on that drive.

 

[Terry]

And you don't have/need to get what is sold as an "external HDD" to have an external HDD. You can get an adapter that will use usb connection and provide power to almost any kind of HDD that you will find available today. Although, a new external HDD isn't very expensive now days, but you might have stuff on an old HDD that you at least need to connect too to get a copy of what you want to keep so these adapters are still a good item to have.

 

[Pikachu711]

Both my 40GB HDD were removed from old laptop computers that I helped "cannibalize" as well. I help a local foundation that re-furbishes old computers and donates them to local students who needs working computers.

They sell cases that hold laptop computer HDD's. The cases are very inexpensive to buy.

 

[bvanevery]

One could make the argument that with all the important data stored on a hard drive, why take the chance?

But it would be a baloney argument, much like Pascal's Wager. I've been running a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop for 4 years, either with a Wagan inverter and Dell (often knockoff) PA12 power brick, a special DC PA12 power brick I got, or just the laptop batteries. My laptop is still alive and kicking, and it's 7 years old now. YMMV but my empirical evidence is pure sine wave stuff is malarky. Very likely, the intermediary of the AC to DC power brick completely nullifies any theoretical problems.

 

[Reducto]

Instead of getting a HD that needs external power, get a smaller one that runs only off USB power. They are usually labeled "portable" and use laptop drives instead of bigger desktop drives. They come up to 2tb now and laptop drives are generally built to handle vibration and shock better than desktop drives.

 

[bvanevery]

For that matter upgrade the size of your internal laptop drive. Just use a program to transfer your system to a new drive. Some of those programs are free / open source. My laptop happened to have 2 internal drive bays, so I just repurposed a USB drive I had by prying its plastic case open. SSDs would consume less power than a regular HD, but I haven't been interested in shelling out for new equipment. Power consumption is something to consider before bothering with external anything.