Spinning up all the drives at once kills my system...

[jesseasi]

Would this be a power supply issue?  I have a 1200 Watt Thermaltake Powersupply.

 

When I try to sping up all the drives immediately, the system just seems to shut off.

[SSD]

I think you are right in thinking is is PSU related.  Seems a likely candidate.  Often times those high watt PSUs are really designed to deliver a ton of power to graphics cards, and not necessarily to the peripheral devices.  You would need to look at the specific outputs to the different rails.

 

When you first turn on your computer, all of the drives spin up at once.  Do you have shut off issues then?

 

You might also do a "tail -f /var/log/syslog" in a telnet window (or from the console) and watch it as you do the spinup.  If there are errors occuring, that might give you some clues.  You could even take a movie of the screen so that you'd be able to read the messages clearly after the shutdown.

[NAS]

Also check that you have distributed your HDD to different rails on your PSU. 1200Watt does not mean 1200Watt to a single cable.

[jesseasi]

I thought I would update this with some results.

 

Based on many of the posts I found regarding power supplies....

 

I decided to replace my Thermaltake 1200 Watt ($350) power supply with a ($160) Corsair 620 Watt power supply.  The HX version that is modular.  Everything works perfectly.  Who woulda thought.

[NAS]

Its amazing how much of the PSU market is "mines bigger than yours"... "but not really if you know a thing or two about power" hype.

 

Glad you got it fixed.

[Joe L.]

Also check that you have distributed your HDD to different rails on your PSU. 1200Watt does not mean 1200Watt to a single cable.

From what I found with a bit of searching on google, that 1200 watt has 4 independent 12 volt rails.

 

Two of the 12 volt rails are rated at 20 amps, the other two (apparently) at 30.  Only three of the 12 volt rails are available on the modular connectors.

 

I am happy to learn your new supply works much better than your old supply, but is it possible you had all the drives connected to one or two of the Thermaltake's 12 volt rails, limiting yourself to far less than total supply potential.

 

Check out the following two links:

 

Hardcop testing results showing 4 independent 12 volt rails.

 

Side of supply showing which 12 volt rails feed specific connectors

 

Joe L.