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poofyhairguy · (This post was last modified: 2011-01-12, 21:43 by poofyhairguy.)

jvdb Wrote:This really isn't a problem, especially using green hard drives that draw around 5w each.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ener...44-10.html

1. Spinup on boot takes more power than that, and can stress single rail systems. On boot all drives go to max power usage.

2. PSU's run more efficiently when saturated, can't do that with multiple rails.

3. If you are gonna fill a case like that Lian Li, you would need a 750w PSU to have enough watts on the primary rail for that many HDs. For that much money you can easily just buy a single rail 500w PSU instead and save money in the short term and electricity in the long term.

bmcclure937 · 2011-01-12, 21:41

jvdb Wrote:This really isn't a problem, especially using green hard drives that draw around 5w each.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ener...44-10.html

They draw 5w a piece after the system is running probably. If you are booting with 8 drives, they will probably draw 25w-30w a piece on boot... (please correct me if I am wrong I have not looked at this for a while).

jvdb · 2011-01-12, 21:57

bmcclure937 Wrote:They draw 5w a piece after the system is running probably. If you are booting with 8 drives, they will probably draw 25w-30w a piece on boot... (please correct me if I am wrong I have not looked at this for a while).

That is probably about right.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/western-dig...mption/828

I'd bet money either of those dual rail power supplies wouldn't have any problems spinning up a packed Antec 300 (10 drive) case of WD Green drives.

As for efficiency, I'll see if I can dig up a 80+ bronze rated dual rail supply and data log the power usage difference against my single rail 80+ bronze rated corsair.

poofyhairguy · 2011-01-12, 22:01

jvdb Wrote:I'd bet money either of those dual rail power supplies wouldn't have any problems spinning up a packed Antec 300 (10 drive) case of WD Green drives.

I don't know about WD Green drives (as I don't have that many) but I DO have an Antec 300 filled will 1.5TB Seagate drives, and until I replaced my 650w Earthwatts PSU with a 400w Antec Neo PSU I had problems on spinup. My Seagates can't eat THAT much more power on boot than WDs.

jvdb · 2011-01-12, 22:23

poofyhairguy Wrote:I don't know about WD Green drives (as I don't have that many) but I DO have an Antec 300 filled will 1.5TB Seagate drives, and until I replaced my 650w Earthwatts PSU with a 400w Antec Neo PSU I had problems on spinup. My Seagates can't eat THAT much more power on boot than WDs.

According to that article I posted, it's more than double (assuming 7200rpm seagate drives)

Quote:One power consumption metric that most reviewers don’t talk about is the spin-up power requirements. While this may not matter to many people, it does matter when you have a large storage array that’s trying to spin up and you have to size the power supply to meet the worst case. The Seagate 7200.10 has a spin-up power consumption of 30 watts while the Western Digital WD10EACS spins up at around 14 watts.

poofyhairguy · (This post was last modified: 2011-01-12, 23:09 by poofyhairguy.)

Well there you go, maybe I could have gotten by with all green drives and my old PSU.

Still, if you are gonna buy from scratch for a media server, why not just get a single rail PSU from the start?

EDIT: I get your point. I will stop recommending Corsair PSUs. I didn't realize they went downhill. I will stick to recommending Seasonic built Antec Neo PSUs.

bmcclure937 · 2011-01-12, 22:38

poofyhairguy Wrote:Well there you go, maybe I could have gotten by with all green drives and my old PSU.

Still, if you are gonna buy from scratch for a media server, why not just get a single rail PSU from the start?

I wish I would have done this... but I was not knowledgeable about single-rail vs. dual-rail at the time.

My current PSU works fine, but I primarily chose it due to the modular cable system. This allowed for easier cable management in my FreeNAS.

It is an OCZ ModXStream 700w PSU. It seems overkill for running a single-core AMD and 4x1TB drives... but I am hoping it will accommodate expansion of up to 8 drives (when I add 4x2TB green drives). Sad

Tbtf · 2011-01-13, 03:27

ok thanks for the help guys I went through your posts but I am a little confused on what I should get.

From What I understand

1) Get the Single Rail PSU that poofy recommended in his first post
2) get these hd's http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...kwCjCECjCE
3) maybe switch out the usb.... I was thinking of getting using an old HD that I have in some pc i dont even use anymore for the OS, to save 30 bucks.

also I should just buy all the drives at once instead of expanding? I would eventually like to have 8-10TB of storage but don't have the cash right now to buy all the hds, so I was thinking i could buy them later on, but according to what jvdb said it doesnt make sense to do this because if one of the new drives fail i will lose my data

I posted on the freenas forums but didnt recieve any help on there. so i really apreciate your guys help

darkscout · 2011-01-13, 03:38

Once again. Stay FAR FAR away Western Digital. If you're even thinking of ever using RAID of any sort, ZFS, etc. Just. No.

Tbtf · 2011-01-13, 03:46

any hd's you would recommend?

jvdb · 2011-01-13, 03:51

Tbtf Wrote:ok thanks for the help guys I went through your posts but I am a little confused on what I should get.

From What I understand

1) Get the Single Rail PSU that poofy recommended in his first post
2) get these hd's http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...kwCjCECjCE
3) maybe switch out the usb.... I was thinking of getting using an old HD that I have in some pc i dont even use anymore for the OS, to save 30 bucks.

also I should just buy all the drives at once instead of expanding? I would eventually like to have 8-10TB of storage but don't have the cash right now to buy all the hds, so I was thinking i could buy them later on, but according to what jvdb said it doesnt make sense to do this because if one of the new drives fail i will lose my data

I posted on the freenas forums but didnt recieve any help on there. so i really apreciate your guys help

Actually I think this recommendation of poofy's is the best:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product (first one was the corsair which may be questionable at this point. I'm not sure who is making their PSUs)

I think you'd be OK using that thumb drive for the OS, but I would recommend getting 2 of them, then you can just dd and have a duplicate/backup.

If you want to add drives one at a time as you buy them, you should at least look at unraid. I have never used it, but it's quite popular around here.

Tbtf · 2011-01-13, 03:55

what about the hds jvdb? darkscout says to stay away from wd... i have also read to stay away from seagate.... any info on that?

darkscout · 2011-01-13, 04:00

I'm running Seagates. They run fine.
If they fail, that's what RAID and warranties are for.

When reading reviews take into account that failures will get people to complain more than writing reviews about successes.

However I swore I even saw a Western Digital tech note on how you shouldn't use the green drives for RAID. You can't enable TLER which causes bad things to happen.

jvdb · 2011-01-13, 04:01

darkscout Wrote:Once again. Stay FAR FAR away Western Digital. If you're even thinking of ever using RAID of any sort, ZFS, etc. Just. No.

Once again, lots of people use WD Green drives without problems. The RE drives are overkill for home use IMO. I have a hard time recommending Seagate at this time--I RMA'd probably 20 of them last year for work.

Google uses Hitachi drives. I think they're a safe bet, BUT you'll need to account for the extra heat and power of using 7200rpm drives.

I've only owned 1 Sammy drive and it failed. They seem to have good user ratings on Newegg, but I don't have enough experience with them to recommend.

darkscout · 2011-01-13, 04:09

jvdb Wrote:Once again, lots of people use WD Green drives without problems. The RE drives are overkill for home use IMO. I have a hard time recommending Seagate at this time--I RMA'd probably 20 of them last year for work.

Google uses Hitachi drives. I think they're a safe bet, BUT you'll need to account for the extra heat and power of using 7200rpm drives.

I've only owned 1 Sammy drive and it failed. They seem to have good user ratings on Newegg, but I don't have enough experience with them to recommend.

So you get your choice:
You can "RMA" drives (which I have no problem with, and most failures are going to be bathtub failures anyway).

Or you can deal with writing at 4MB/s like I did on my WD drives.