How to power a 4tb via USB?

[green elephant]

I am thinking of buying A 4tb external hard drive seagate, and I want to be able to power it by my laptop rather than having to be next to a power outlet everywhere I want to use it. Is there some sort of adapter I can buy on eBay that will is another USB cable just for power? Thanks.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Even USB 3.0 won't provide enough power for a 3.5" drive, even if using a Y-cable.

 

[essenbe]

Jeannie is correct. There is no way to power a 3.5" drive with your laptop. You can power a 2.5" drive and Seagate makes those too, but I doubt a 4 TB one.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You can power 2.5" drives with a single port on USB 3.0. USB 2.0 ports have less power and you have to use a Y-cable so you can draw power from two ports.

2TB is the largest 2.5" HDD I have seen so far.

 

[johnebadbak]

SATA usb docking station my do the job has its own power supply

It accepts 3.5 and 2.5 hdds

 

[strollin]

I have a 4TB 3.5" drive and it uses a power brick that outputs 12V @ 1.5A. There is no adapter you could plug in to a USB port to get that much power. Even if you could power it from your laptop, it would put a serious dent in the time you could run your laptop on battery power.

You may be able to find a separate DC power pack that could provide the required voltage and current to power the external drive.