American Hard Drive Instability in China

From the USA, I have brought several external firewire hard drives that I connect to my Macbook Pro to edit in Final Cut Pro. On all the hard drives power bricks the input is rated 100-240V, yet whenever I turn on Final Cut Pro the program constantly crashes. I noticed that my hard drives vibrate because of the 110/220 voltage difference, so my theory is that the drives don't work well with 220V electricity despite the specs written on the power brick. So today I bought a large transformer, Yue Ying brand, rated for 2000 watts. The input is 220V and output is 110V. I've connected a brand new American APC 10 outlet Back-UPS to it, and my hard drives to the battery backup plugs on the UPS. Final Cut Pro is still unstable and crashing. I'm not sure what to do at this point. The salesman connected the transformer to a digital meter and rated 110V. I'm wondering whether the hard drive should run at 120V, or possibly the 50/60Hz cycle difference is causing the issue. I do not have this issue at all in the USA, only in China. Any advice would be most appreciated!


Thanks,

Alexander

To start with, no hard drive actually runs on AC, 110-120 or 220-240. Hard drives run at different voltages depending on type, none over 5V.


There is most likely nothing wrong with the hard drives themselves. It seems to be a power supply ("power brick") issue. The power supplies you have may be out of spec for some reason, and not supplying DC to the hard drives within the required voltage range.


My recommendation would be to try some other hard drive enclosure for your external drives, with another kind of power supply.


Also, have you tried changing the firewire cable? My friend the techie has a saying: CFC - "Check First the Cable".

On the power brick it says:


Input: 100-240Vac, 50-60Hz

0.85A Max. 50VA-80VA


Output: 5V dc - 1.5A, peak 2.0A

12V dc - 1.5A, peak 2.3A


The firewire cable is fine as I use them all the time and switching them with another cable has had no effect. Trying another hard drive enclosure is a good idea. I will have to copy the files to another hard drive though as 2 out of 3 of them are single piece units. I can't believe I'm the only one to experience this problem. I hope I didn't buy this huge 2000 watt transformer for nothing.

"Output: 5V dc - 1.5A, peak 2.0A

12V dc - 1.5A, peak 2.3A "


There you go. The hard drives run on that DC power. Anyway good luck with another enclosure. Try another brand if nothing else.


Have you contacted the manufacturer about this?

Yes, but since the output will always be 5V or 12V, no matter the input voltage, I'm not sure why the power bricks wouldn't work here. I sent an e-mail to G-tech and Wiebetech, and they don't know what the problem is as well. I brought 8 hard drives from the USA and really don't feel like buying another one, but perhaps I might have to bite the bullet. Thx axptguy38!

"Yes, but since the output will always be 5V or 12V, no matter the input voltage, I'm not sure why the power bricks wouldn't work here."


I agree with that.


"I brought 8 hard drives from the USA and really don't feel like buying another one,"


Did you bring just the drives or also the enclosures? You could always buy new enclosures and install your existing drives in them. Would save a lot ofmoney.