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PacHead · May 6, 2006, 02:35 PM

I put two new drives in my Quicksilver yesterday, for a total of 5 internals so far. (The raptor rocks, BTW). Everything is working smooth, and it's not really much louder than before.

I need to add two more drives, but is there a way to figure out exactly how much power consumption all the drives would use together and to see if the power supply would handle it, without simply installing the drives first and hoping for the best or just guessing ?

Can I look at the power ratings on the drive itself and just add those up and subtract the total number from the power supply ? I'm curious to find out exactly how much power my power supply in the Quicksilver is using and how much left I have available for other things. Is there some software program that tells how much power the power supply is using ? I think mine's a 350 watt.

If it turns out, that there is not sufficient power, then I'll just go external SATA, no biggie, I'd just prefer to have it internal, since I have the space, and it would be slightly cheaper.

seanc · May 6, 2006, 03:03 PM

Out of interest, why do you need seven drives?

G5man · May 6, 2006, 03:16 PM

What do you use the QuickSilver for? What needs do your require to need 7 HDs? I would probably upgrade the power supply if you want to add two more drives into the inside. Or get an external enclosure to save some space in the tower and lessen the heat.

PacHead · May 6, 2006, 03:17 PM

Originally Posted by seanc

Out of interest, why do you need seven drives?

Well, they're for different reasons.

This is what the 5 I currently have will be used for:

(1) Boot Drive and applications (WD 250 Gig - 16 meg cache SATA)
(2) Audio Scratch disk (I use it for Protools, Logic, Cubase etc.) (Raptor 74 gig SATA)
(3) Sample Drive (I store plenty of sounds and samples on this drive) (WD 250 gig - 8 meg cache - IDE ATA 66)
(4) Porn Drive (A man has got to have his porn and movies take up plenty of space.) (WD 120 gig - IDE ATA 66)
(5) Backup drive (Seagate 60 gig - IDE) - This one is on the ATA 33 bus, that is shares with the DVD burner, so it's connection is slower than the other drives, but it's only used for storage purposes, so it's alright.

When I get two more drives, I will just use them to store more things on, that take up plenty of space, like when I'm editing a home DV movie and stuff like that. Gigs go quickly when you're doing DV and video stuff.

PacHead · May 6, 2006, 03:18 PM

Originally Posted by G5man

What do you use the QuickSilver for? What needs do your require to need 7 HDs? I would probably upgrade the power supply if you want to add two more drives into the inside. Or get an external enclosure to save some space in the tower and lessen the heat.

Yeah, it might not handle 7, and in that case, I'll just go external SATA. I was just wondering if there was a formula to actually findout beforehand and not just buying the drives, installing, and see what happens.

bowwowman · May 6, 2006, 03:24 PM

AFAIK, all QS's shipped with 360W power supplies........

so you would have to find out & add up the wattages from ALL components to see if you have enough juice..... this includes the CPU, video card, pci cards, the mobo, the opticals etc etc etc

BTW, I used to run a B&W, which only had a 200W PSU, with a G4/550 upgrade, Radeon 9200 GPU, Sonnet ATA controller, Firmtek SATA controller, 2 extra fans, 2x ATA-100 HDD's + 2x 74GB SATA Raptors, 4 port USB card, DVD/CD-RW and Zip 100.....notta problemo for over 3 years......

Now I have a Sawtooth DP450 (200W also) equipped essentially the same way, and it runs like a champ too!!

PacHead · May 6, 2006, 03:28 PM

Originally Posted by bowwowman

BTW, I used to run a B&W, which only had a 200W PSU, with a G4/550 upgrade, Radeon 9200 GPU, Sonnet ATA controller, Firmtek SATA controller, 2 extra fans, 2x ATA-100 HDD's + 2x 74GB SATA Raptors, 4 port USB card, DVD/CD-RW and Zip 100.....notta problemo for over 3 years......

Wow, that's good news. If you could run all of that on a 200 watt power supply, then I guess the Quicksilver should be able to handle a couple of more drives, in my case.

thanks.

PacHead · May 9, 2006, 11:10 AM

Here's a little update to this story. I'm not sure if this is related to the installation of the two new drives or if it's just a coincidence and I was an unlucky bastard, but a Firewire drive which I've used for years got fried a couple of days ago, when I was plugging the cable into the G4. I felt a static discharge when connecting the firewire cable to the G4 and then my firewire enclosure smelt burnt. I tested my G4 firewire ports, and luckily they're ok, the only thing that got ruined was the firewire enclosure. I'm not sure about the drive inside of the enclosure yet, since I haven't tested it yet.

I did a bit of googling, and I'll probably buy one of those firewire cables without the power in it, when I order a new enclosure. Who needs a firewire cable with power anyhow, unless you're using a bus-powered drive ? Most drives and firewire devices are not bus powered.

mduell · May 9, 2006, 02:18 PM

You can look at the manufacturers site for the peak starting, read/write/seek, and idle power consumption.

jamil5454 · May 9, 2006, 10:21 PM

What's also important is the amperage on the 5V rails. Also, the general rule of thumb I use is the number of hard drive power connectors the particular PCU has. So, if say, you only have 6 5V connectors then I wouldn't recommend installing more than 6 drives.

If you've got more connectors to spare, then connect the cables to the drives rotating from one branch/chain to the next, so that the power load is evenly distributed across all branches of 5V connectors.

On my PC, I once connected both power inputs of my 7800GT to the connectors from just one cable, and while it was a 500W PSU, I was getting random freezes and reboots. Connecting one connector from one cable and another from another cable solved the problem. You don't want to put too much load on any one branch of connectors.

Do I make myself clear?