I have a Power Adapters page where I list the power adapters that are needed for various devices. I started the page years ago after repeated instances where I had to figure out what power adapter went with what device when an adapter got disassociated from a device and either lost or jumbled with other adapters. To make it easier for me to immediately associate an adapter with a device, I listed the model/part number for a device and the model/part number for its power adapter. I also list, when I can find a source, a site where a suitable replacement adapter can be purchased. Now, whenever I encounter a device, I try to immediately enter the power adapter information for it on my web page. But today, I found a couple of power adapters next to a couple of devices that I had jumbled together. And when I checked my web page I found that I hadn't entered the power adapter information for either device. I was fairly certain that I could associate the right adapter with each advice, assuming that since the adapters were near the devices that they were indeed the ones that went with those devices, but while double-checking on the adapter for a Seagate USB external drive with part number 9SF2A4-500, I came across Felix's Blog, a blog from another person providing tech support, by Marcel "Felix" Giannelia of Terrace, BC, Canada who provides Disassembly instructions for Seagate 1 TB Expansion External Drive (9SE2A4-571 or 9SF2A4-500). I've copied his instructions to my own site here, so that I have a copy should the author's site, or even just these instructions, disappear, since he states at Welcome to Felix's little Knowledge Base thing that "I've been even sloppier about copyright in the files I've written myself. I intend the ones I wrote myself to be in the public domain." According to his disassembly instructions, the drive inside the Seagate External Expansion case is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 model ST31000528AS
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Checking other postings's to the author's site, I found "Do NOT paraphrase when calling tech support", which links to an email he sent to a user regarding the user's paraphrasing an error message for the Eudora email client, a program I once used many years ago and which users I supported once used. I can certainly emphasize with his posting; many years ago when I was a sysadmin for a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VMS system, a user contacted me about a problem with one of her databases on the system. She gave me the error message and, since DEC very nicely provided documentation for the database software listing possible error messages and steps to take to rectify the problem associated with a particular error message, I referred to that documenation and found it listed an error message that was a very close match to the one the user gave me. After spending a couple of hours checking all of the possibilities listed for that error message, I contacted the user and had her recreate the problem. When she then read me the exact error message, I realized it was quite different than what she had paraphrased from memory previously. Once I had the exact error message, it only took me a few minutes to fix the problem, but I had wasted hours on the problem before that because she hadn't written down the exact message, but gave me a paraphrased version. One user takes snapshots of error messages on her computer screen with her phone now and sends them to me; that's very helpful, since I can see the window containing the error message and its exact contents.
I also found his "Why cats save humans from house fires" amusing, though the smoke alarm has almost never gone off in our house due to food preparation. It did go off one time when I put the tea kettle on the stove to heat water for tea and then went into another room to work on a computer. I didn't hear the tea kettle whistling; when the smoke alarm went off I went into the kitchen and found that all of the water in the tea kettle had boiled off and there was a burning puddle of plastic next to the tea kettle due to the plastic on the handle melting. Our cats didn't like the blaring smoke alarms throughout the house.
In another posting by Felix, I found an adapter that will also be useful to me, since it supports both IDE, aka PATA, drives as well as SATA hard disk drives listed in his a "Product Plug!" posting for a "Ultra USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Cable for 2.5-Inch/ 3.5-Inch / 5.25-Inch Drive with Power Adapter", which he notes is a "a USB to any-kind-of-hard-drive adapter. That is, it's got a USB plug on one end, and all the kinds of hard drive connector mashed together on the other end. I just ordered one, because this is going to save me so much time disassembling USB enclosures". His link was to the ULT40112 on the TigerDirect.ca site, i.e., the Canadian site for TigerDirect; it is available in the U.S. from TigerDirect.com. I have devices that provide USB connectivity for hard drives that aren't in an enclosure, but none that support both IDE, aka PATA, and SATA drives.
Unfortunately, the plug on the Asian Power Devices WA-24E12 (output 12V 2A) power adapter I found near the drive that I thought went with the drive would not plug into the drive, even though according to information I found elsewhere online it should have worked for that drive. Another 12V 2A adapter, model ADS-24F-12 1224GPCU, I tried from another Seagate external USB disk drive enclosure did connect easily, though.
