I'm having some trouble with I believe is my PSU, and looking for some sound advice.
I have a server with the following hardware:
CPU
Fans
2 x 1.5TB
3 x 2TB
1 x 1TB
1 x 750Gb OS drive
I added the 3rd 2TB drive last night, and worked on cleaning up the cable management. On booting, I could only see 6 drives. I narrowed down which drive was missing, tested it by removing the others and it spun up fine. I rewired all the power connectors to try to distribute the drives on the two power leads, and again, only 6 drives showing. The missing drive was different to the original missing drive.
This leads me to believe the PSU is unable, in the configeration I am using, to power all of the drives and other kit. My PSU is this:
Atrix Extreme Power 650W (650T)
I've read reviews which say it is low-end, and want to replace it, but I am not sure how best to power upto 12 Sata drives...
Currently I have a mixture of sata power, molex to 3 x sata, molex to 2x sata etc, and would appreciate advice on how this number of drives should be wired, and possible PSUs for the job.
My server build is here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=88544
My motherboard requires the 4pin and 2x12pin power connectors. I use onboard graphics as its currently a server so don't need high end graphics.
I know Corsair is a good brand, and single rail is important.
How is this:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135514
Its a good Corsair PSU, but will it work with my mobo? (DG41TY is microATX? mobo is hardly micro sized!?)
Thanks for any comments
1) That Atrix is way more power than you need (outside a reasonable power efficiency envelope) for what you need/listed
2) That power supply is junk and most likely the culprit of system problems you have
3) Buy a quality (and efficient if its on all the time) power supply. I would suggest 450w for your needs.
You want to look for a power supply with stable quality power that is efficient for the power range you will be using. The corsair you listed would work for you. The HX line is even nicer and is built by Seasonic of the US. They make the best power supplies available in PC's. Most people usually skimp on power supplies and buy the local $30 special but I advise you to do research and read reviews for whatever you choose to buy.
Poofy is right. The only reason to get that 650TX Corsair is if you want to be able to support 20 7200 rpm drives in your server. If you are running green drives then a 400-450w would be enough for your current server. Just make sure that whatever PSU you get has a single 12v rail. That is the most important thing.
depending on the drive itself, and any optimizations they have made towards power efficiency, the amount of power a mechanical drive can consume will vary a fair bit. Typical idle power consumption is between the range of 5-9w, depending on capacity (number of platters) and speed (4200/5400/5900/7200 rpm), and some other factors. Seek, read, and write power figures will range from about 10-13w for a modern SATA drive (SCSI drives almost twice that). But what may be a factor here is actually the peak draw, which you will typically see when the drives are first initialized on boot. In this instance you can expect each drive to consume as 30w/2a (12v) per drive. So with the 7 drives alone, at post you can see a peak of 210w and 14a on the 12v rail from you're power supply. All this excluding the demands of the rest of the system, and factoring in the range at which your power supply is truly capable of delivering what it advertises. Some loads are handled more efficiently than others.
I expect your generic unit just to be over rated, it is not uncommon for what is really a 400-450w unit to be labeled a 650w unit based on its peak output rather than its constant sustainable output.
One way to curb this is to look if your drives, and your controller, support staggered spin up. This basically means the system will load up each drive in a certain order to minimize load on the system. Not all drives and controllers support this, so your best bet is to find a highly efficient, robust, and reliable power supply from a name brand.
The 650TX is a great unit and one I would highly suggest. But I'll tell you right now its not going to run 20x 7200 RPM drives. I have a server that I built to utilize 24x 7200RPM drives and requires 2x 750w Silverstone ST75F units to reliably make it through that initial peak at post without staggered spin up.
A solid 400-550 is a good range, look for at least 80%+ efficiency rating, and ideally one that can provide that high efficiency in the range of power your system is going to draw. As a point of reference, my little media server is similar to yours (4x 2TB + 1x 30gb SSD), after removing 2x 750 and 1x 1TB drives, but even with those 7x mechanical drives, I had solid performance from the Antec Earthwatts 650, which is a pretty affordable and reliable unit.
hope that helps.
Thanks for the info guys, Wicky, thanks for the detailed comments.
My drives are a mixture of green and not so green, some are new, some are a little older. I aim to replace them as and when with 2TB drives to end up with around 12 drives, as that's what will fit in my Coolmaster 590.
Due to the growing needs, I'd rather 'play it safe' and go for a more powerful psu now, so think i will order the Corsair 650TX to take delivery tomorrow. Looking at the Unraid wiki, the 650TX has 52A on the single 12v rail, and is rated 80+ efficiency.
I've spent another hour tonight trying to get even 6 drives and all fans going by connecting them to different cables on the PSU, this thing is crap, I'm stuck with only 5 drives booting up now!?
Not sure how I'd do "staggered start" on the drives, but will look into it thanks.
Cheers guys,
Ordered the 650TX and another 2TB drive, to compensate for the hassle to myself
t2ffn Wrote:Ordered the 650TX and another 2TB drive, to compensate for the hassle to myself
I like your style.
Corsair are worth it for the warranty alone just sent my HX450 back and got a HX650 in return without question
Further to the comments about initial power draw, most hard disks will also draw significantly on the 5V rail during spin-up. As the cheaper PSUs tend to neglect the 5V line, this can lead to problems at boot even if the quoted power should be more than adequate. Fortunately the better PSUs, like Corsair, tend to have ample power available on all lines, solving this issue
Delivered before 9am
The Samsung drive recommends a firmware update for use in NAS drives, but does that include my server?
Quote:FOR USE WITH NAS DRIVES, WE RECOMMEND INSTALLING THIS FIRMWARE UPDATE BEFORE USING:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/h...msg_id=386
Now, I already have one of these drives with a load of data on it, can i still update the firmware? I tried making a bootable USB using Unetboot but it just came up with the Unetboot screen, and looked like it was waiting for a command... linux style?
My questions:
Can I update firmware on a drive that is not empty?
Best way of doing it? Bootable USB?
Do I NEED to update it?
Thanks
t2ffn Wrote:1)Can I update firmware on a drive that is not empty?
2)Best way of doing it? Bootable USB?
3)Do I NEED to update it?
1) There is no mention on the
website you linked of any potential loss of data. However, there is also no mention of it
not erasing data. As it is a firmware update, my suspicion is that it will not damage the data on the disk, but I'm not 100% sure. My suggestions are to backup the data and find out, or wait to see if someone else knows for sure.
2) Translating the Engrish on that website, it looks like you need a bootable DOS disk to update. This is a terrible way of implementing important FW updates, and the people who made it should be shot.
It generally requires a spare 3.5" floppy and drive, which most people don't have any more. Having used DOS for flashing my graphics cards, I know there is a way to do it with a USB drive, even if I haven't done it for a while.
This how-to seems to know what it's talking about. Just follow the steps to get the bootable USB drive, stick the F4EG.EXE file on it, boot and run.
Obviously, if anyone knows of an easier to boot to clean DOS, please say so.
3) From what I can understand, the drive sometimes corrupts NCQ write commands. If your server was built in the last 5 years or so, chances are it will implement NCQ. Unfortunately, this is definitely a recommended update.
numb7rs Wrote:Further to the comments about initial power draw, most hard disks will also draw significantly on the 5V rail during spin-up. As the cheaper PSUs tend to neglect the 5V line, this can lead to problems at boot even if the quoted power should be more than adequate. Fortunately the better PSUs, like Corsair, tend to have ample power available on all lines, solving this issue
Nicer PSU's don't have a distinct 5v and 3.3v rail per se but just step down from the 12v rail for it. That's how most are upping the efficiency a lot on them. As for the dos woes, go to WD site and look up their utility to make a bootable USB stick to load dos. Just add your samsung firmware flasher to it and call it good.
Hmmm, I've made a bootable USB and have typed F4EG.exe and hit return...
I didn't have the PC connected to the internet while doing this, didn't realise it was going to download the firmware. So now I plugged it in, but I don't know if it is downloading / applying th firmware... its just a blinking curser below the MS DOS command
C:\>F4EG.exe
Nothing appears to be happening but I dont want to reset half way through, as it says this can damage the drive. How long do I wait? Its been about 10mins, prob 5mins since connecting ethernet back up...