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Is it dangerous to plug two power plugs with transformers into the same wall socket?
I've got two external hard drives. Both of them have a power cord with a large transformer on the end. Would it be dangerous to the drives if I plug both cords into the same 2-socket wall outlet?
Sewaba,
It's not dangerous. How the cable splits has nothing to do with the power drawn from the outlet. Like the one answer said - don't modify anything. Other than that - you are fine.
Think of it this way - a hairdryer runs about 1500 watts. That's the power rating. I just checked my external drive. It's 25 watts. That means I could run SIXTY hard drives off of this electrical outlet if I wanted to.
The outlet will have either a fuse or a circuit breaker that will blow if you use too much power. This won't happen in this case - but if you did, that's the result. Houses are designed to make it literally impossible for you to do something dangerous as long as all you are doing is plugging stuff in and using stuff the way it's supposed to be used. It's a bad idea to plug in a bunch of branches and run a circuit at the limit, and they recommend against that - but you are not going to run into trouble with hard drives - ever.
That being said - it's important for those transformers on the end to get enough air to cool them or they can build up heat. It's not because you have 2 plugged in - it's the nature of how they work. A normal one plugged in will still get warm, but it won't get super hot as long as it's got open air around it. The danger is when people have them on power strips on the ground, then they pile stuff on top of them, the heat can't dissipate, and it builds up. Because the heat is being formed independently from the electrical circuit, it's free to start a fire because the circuit breaker will not 'sense' a problem.
-Kevin
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