August 22, 201114 yr Hi all. I recently purchased a Norco drive cage for my first unraid build. I noticed that it has redundant molex connectors. Is this intended for dual power supplies? Does it do me any good to plug molex into both of them if I only have one power supply? Also I will only be filling up 3 drives initially in this 5 drive cage. Can I go ahead and run cables to all 5 to the motherboard? That way I dont have to open it up to fill in the rest of the drives. Thanks!
August 22, 201114 yr Hi all. I recently purchased a Norco drive cage for my first unraid build. I noticed that it has redundant molex connectors. Is this intended for dual power supplies? Does it do me any good to plug molex into both of them if I only have one power supply? Also I will only be filling up 3 drives initially in this 5 drive cage. Can I go ahead and run cables to all 5 to the motherboard? That way I dont have to open it up to fill in the rest of the drives. Thanks! Yes the second set of molex connectors are intended for a redundant power supply and there's no point in using both connectors if you only have one power supply. Yes, you can connect all of the sas/sata cables so there is no need to open the case later.
August 22, 201114 yr Yes the second set of molex connectors are intended for a redundant power supply and there's no point in using both connectors if you only have one power supply. Do you have a reference for this statement? I always believed that it was important to connect more than one molex power cable because some drive combinations can exceed the maximum current specification of the molex connector, especially in a five drive cage.
August 22, 201114 yr Yes the second set of molex connectors are intended for a redundant power supply and there's no point in using both connectors if you only have one power supply. Do you have a reference for this statement? I always believed that it was important to connect more than one molex power cable because some drive combinations can exceed the maximum current specification of the molex connector, especially in a five drive cage. If I remember correctly the Norco site listed it as a "redundent" molex connector. I always connect the "extra"/other molex connector, it makes me feel more safe.
August 22, 201114 yr prostuff1 is right, on the Norco site it is listed as a redundant connector. I don't think it makes sense to connect 2 molex from the same PSU.
August 22, 201114 yr I've read about more than 1 user having strange, interemittent issues when only connecting a single molex. I believe it was mostly just one of the Norco cases, maybe the 4220? I personally would run different cables from the supply to each connector. Peter
August 22, 201114 yr Only one molex is required for operation, and it doesn't matter which one you use. If you are using a power supply with enough molex plugs to hook up two to each drive cage then there's no harm in that. However, if using both molex plugs requires you to use power splitters, then I recommend against it. Power splitters are often the cheapest/weakest link in a server, so I've found it is always best to avoid using them whenever possible.
August 22, 201114 yr Just keep the possible issue in mind if you only use one plug. FYI, here's a post where it solved the issue. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8629.msg85077#msg85077 Peter
August 22, 201114 yr Thanks for all the responses. That is going to help me out a lot. Hope to get the server running this weekend after I pick up a few drives
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