Does running external drives use up a lot of power?

Marcos

Marcos

Marcos

Soldato
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Thinking of getting a Slug (Linksys NSLU-2) and running 2x 3.5" 500GB external drives, they are silent so i wouldnt mind running them all day, just wondering if anyone has any rough idea of the watts they use up?

i dont know how to work it out
 
My network driver has an interface which i can set the amount of time before it powers down, cant see it using more than a few watts when powered down. I guess usb ones should do something similar too.
 
yeah i'm talking about the full size 500GB drives that run with an AC adapter, but i dont know how to work out power usage from what it tells me. Im trying to relate it to watts
 
Hi,

The average HDD takes around 1w idle (spun down) 8w idle (spun up), 12w active

There will be a small overhead for the onboard (caddy) electronics and the loss in the power pack say 5W.

24/7 365 usage costs about £1 per w so with average usage £15 - £20 year each.

Unless you are running them as a mirror you could look at the 1TB WD RE2 which is now on OCUK at £145 .... this uses just 4w idle (spun up) 7w active and you'd only need a single drive so you'd save around £20 year over two 500's

AD
 
IMO a server hard drive will most probably spend 95% of its time idle (assuming you're using it for media streaming) so you're probably looking at quite a bit less than decto quoted on the yearly figure.
 
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