July 10, 200817 yr Ok i just bought another 1tb seagate. it is my 11th hd in my server including the parity. 2 750s, 4 1tbs, and 5 500s. im using a 1000 watt power supply and figured that would be enough. after i plugged in the new hd the server would power on but only for about 2 seconds and then shut off. the only way i could get it to stay on is if i turned the server on and then plugged in the neww hd. what does this sound like to you guys? power supply or bad hd, or something else all together? the hd is cleared and formated and everthing seams ok but if i shut it down and restart it i dont want to have to disconect and then reconect anything. Thanks in advance.
July 10, 200817 yr Try disconnecting the power to a few of the old drives and leave power to the new drive. If you get the same behavior, it is either the cabling for the new drive or the new drive itself. You should also consider the SATA connection: I doubt if you have 11 connectors on the mobo so at least a few of those are on an add-on card. Is the new drive on a different card than the others? Can you try swapping around connectors such that the system start up issues follow the power cabling or signal cabling? Bill
July 10, 200817 yr There's a wide range in quality of power supply. A good quality 600 watt PSU should be able to handle your array, and a poor quality 1000 watt might have trouble. There's a lot of PSU's that claim a much higher output than they can actually produce under demand, or when hot. It may also have too many 12V rails, and you may have too many drives on the same 12V rail. Are you using a lot of wye connectors to split the power? Can you tell us the make and model of power supply?
July 10, 200817 yr These are the classic signs of an underpowered power supply. But 1000w is way overkill. Even with 2 rails, 500w should still be plenty. I have 16 drives running from a 550watt supply. If you have a UPS or Kill-a-watt meter that can measure power draw, I'd be interested what your system is pulling just before it shuts down. That will tell you if something is pulling huge amounts of power at bootup. My gut says not. I have never heard of a drive pulling hundreds of watts of extra power. I therefore don't think this is likely a drive problem - but I have been fooled many times so don't take this initial take as fact. Possible causes: 1. As RobJ eluded, try connecting your new hard drive (and maybe a couple others) to a PSU connector coming from a separate line from the PSU itself. If you have a modular supply, and only have one line of molex/sata connectors installed, install another one and split the drives among them. If your drive is a single rail, this won't make a difference. But if it is multi-rail, it may just fix the problem. (Check the docs for the PSU). 2. It is also possible that your PSU is defective, and not delivering its rated power. Even if #1 fixes the problem, unless your PSU has 4 rails, this is soundling likely IMO. 3. It could also be some kind of cabling issue (as Billped described). Good luck!
July 10, 200817 yr Can you document what your power supply is so we can review it's specifications? In any case, I believe the power supply may be rated for 1000W but also is not able to handle the surge on a specific rail. limetech uses a 610W pc power and cooling with 40a or so on a single rail. So whatever other 400w are available to you, may not be available on the peripheral rail. Also, please document the model numbers of the most recent drives. I.E. the 1TB and 750's. You "MAY" be able to get by with setting some of the most recent drives to power up in standby. This will tell the drive not to spin up until it is asked to do so, in turn this may alleviate the huge surge on power on. Here is how I set it on my system with hdparm hdparm -s1 --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing /dev/sdf Here is how I check it. root@Atlas:/boot/custom/bin# hdparm -I /dev/sdf | egrep -i standby powers-up in standby; SET FEATURES subcmd spins-up. Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum On some drives, there is a jumper to enable this feature. http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf For WD Caviar Green / GP http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1679&p_created=#jumper For my seagate I had to do it in software. http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.11/100452348e.pdf
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