so I'm going to make a really big sata vault and buy several 500/320/300gb (whenever they're on sale) and use this sata multiplexer. Does anyone have a good psu to recommend? I only need 153w for 5 drives and about 320 for 10. I'm going to start with 5. I was planning on making my own case out of an old 3u or 4u chassis unless you guys have a cheaper or better alternative. I'll document it if anyone is interested, but I still need the base.
http://www.cooldrives.com/cosapomubrso.html is the controller I was going to use. I've seen some other chinese knockoffs but I'd prefer buying from the guys that actually designed the chipset

1/20/2008 12:45:12 PM

that's pretty neat. I wouldn't mind doing it if I didn't spend the money to build a raid server already. There's always some sort of PSU deal going on. Wished it more dedicated raid features than software based.

1/20/2008 4:49:50 PM

Quote :

"I've seen some other chinese knockoffs but I'd prefer buying from the guys that actually designed the chipset"

uh, that image on that page shows the chipset to be a silicon image chipset, not a cooldrive chipset

It uses the Sil 3726 chipset
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=26

This looks to be the same thing and USA:
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_cables_adapters/3726PM.asp

For a good solid PSU, I'd say Antec Earthwatts

If you documented it, I would def. be interested

[Edited on January 20, 2008 at 11:30 PM. Reason : .]

1/20/2008 11:28:20 PM

I know its a siliconimage chipset, and silicon image made the board that cooldrive is selling. I've seen several no-name chipset multiplexers out there too, those are what I want to avoid.

1/20/2008 11:51:47 PM

this sounds interesting...do you have a step-by-step webguide you're following or something?

1/21/2008 10:49:49 AM

nah, just making it myself

1/21/2008 12:25:53 PM

i know Bakunin did a thread on this awhile back that may be another resource:
http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=427353

1/21/2008 1:07:11 PM

maybe something like this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104044

it's MicroATX so it could work in smaller case, high efficiency, quiet, dual 12v rails.
4x peripheral (molex), 2x sata (up to 6 drives) and just short out the 20-pin to make it start with the PSU switch, get some molex splitters to fit up to 10 drives.

and how'd you get 32W for a hard drive?

1/21/2008 1:29:02 PM

yeah, was wondering about that. Raptors use 10.02watts at full load and SCSI isn't that far off in power usage. 7200 drives should be less then that too.

1/21/2008 1:36:18 PM

well at worst i've seen 500GB SATA 7,200rpm drives hit 12W peak, assuming the power supply is outputting 65% efficiency that's still only 23W (assuming 15W peak)

[Edited on January 21, 2008 at 1:43 PM. Reason : .]

1/21/2008 1:43:07 PM

I was just using some online calculator and adding an extra 10% margin of error, since most psu's don't have 10 things plugged into the 12v rail

1/21/2008 2:54:13 PM

yea, you're right, it will probably come down to the amps, 15W = 12v * amperage

each hard drive at max load should only consume 1.25 amps, so i think even if you took 2 amps per hard drive, you'd still be ok if you had 20A on a single 12v rail, but i'd go dual 12v rail anyways just to be sure

1/21/2008 3:21:36 PM