Europe bought Seagate Freeagent - safe use in N. America?

[johndrake939393]

Hello,

I purchased a Seagate Freeagent Desktop in Europe (Sweden), a 250 gb,
and I would
like to safely access the data already stored on the drive in North
America, specifically
Canada. The voltage in Europe was 220v, the voltage in Canada is
110v. I own a voltage
converter that's safe for up to 50 w, and I have an adapter plug to
use the European adapter
plug in a North American outlet. However, the bundled adapter from
Seagate bought in Europe
says it's rated for 110/220v.

How I safely access the data on the drive in North America? Does the
Seagate adapter
already have a converter/transformer built in? And all I need to do
is use the adapter plug ?

Or should I plug in the adapter from Seagate into the adapter plug and
then into the voltage
converter?

Anyone who has done this before and uses the drive from overseas
safely, is preferred.

I contacted Seagate (18007324283) and forget it. The India call
center doesn't know anything,
and I waited 1 hour. I went into a live chat session with Seagate
afterwards, and there was no
improvement.

Thank-you !

 

[Bob I]

If you get it working, Windows XP will read it just fine.

 

[dobey]

If you get it working, Windows XP will read it just fine.

I think that's the stage he want's to get to.

I assume this is an inline AC adapter.

The adapter is rated 110/220v, which means it can be used in countries with
110v or 220v power supplies.

110/220v is the input, the output will be 5/12v regardless. If it has the
generic 2 pin socket from the wall into the adapter you could just use lead
of a similar type that was handy, but your unit may be hard wired.

I'm not sure about Seagates power sockets into the drive, but If you are
tempted to use an AC adapter for another brand of external HDD, don't.

Most external enclosures I have seen use a round plug that looks like an
s-video plug. On the back of the adapter you may see a diagram indicating
the voltages supplied to the pins in this plug. They are not all wired the
same, even though they may fit in another enclosure. If the wiring diagram
is the same then there should be no problem. Admittedly I have only had
dealings with generic enclosures. Saegate may use thier own exclusive plug.

Most PSU, etc are auto-sensing, or are made to deal with global variations.
So I don't see any problem provided your power supply is within the 110/220v
range. Even higher or lower would still work, but higher would shorten the
life of the adapter.

We have 230v here and in the days when monitors had the voltage switch on
the back, occasionally someone would get curious and the magic smoke would
escape ;-)

BTW this isn't really an XP question, (hence the unhelpful reply from BoB
I), you could have asked at your local electronics store.