Really? I threw mine out after it broke, but I'm almost certain it was 15V...

I have been surviving on 12V @ 1A, which is easy to find, as you say. With the two disks in mine, that is sufficient to do uploads to the unit, but during playback it regularly has short periods of no sound output, which I assume is each new disk access.

Maybe mine is an earlier unit, and the power requirement dropped slightly with later HDDs?