Re: Selective spin-up

[Brad Campbell <brad@wasp.net.au>]

John Hendrikx wrote:
> I recently extended my raid array with a 9th drive, and I find that the 
> 300 watt PSU I use is insufficient to start the system.  What happens is 
> that I activate the machine, the machine starts powering up for 3 
> seconds orso (spinning all the hard drives up about half way) then power 
> cuts out.  I've heard that it is possible to spin up disks one at a time 
> or in groups, but cannot find any such option in the BIOS (Asus A8N-E 
> board).  Any ideas?

I had a similar problem with a 480W PSU and my 15 drive array..
I looked for selective spinup and other hacks, but to be honest I figured that even if the trip 
point is under spin up load only, I was running the PSU too close to the wire to be comfortable.
I bought a 600W unit and re-wired it's dual 12V rails to do the job.. Problem solved.

I also run a smart check every morning (6 days short 1 day long) simultaneously on all drives to 
make sure the system behaves under load.

Do yourself a favour and grab a shiny new PSU.. I have 14 Drives hanging off a 420W unit in my other 
box that behave perfectly..

Just look at the the 12V rail capacity on any PSU you choose and make sure it will cope with the 
spool up load. I grabbed Maxtor's docs on these drives, calculated the load for 15 drives and worked 
from there.. My practical measurements came to within about 15% of the theoretical so the docs are 
not to bad.

Brad
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