Limitations of SATA

[MrMooreIOM]

I've recently done a complete rebuild of my unraid server, I moved from a HP Gen8 Microserver to a custom AMD Build. (See Build list below)

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/v9FrvW

 

I'm housing this in the Fractal Design Define R6 which can house up to 10 drives, I've powered my first drive up with the SATA Power from the PSU to the drive however the cable only can supply power to 3 drives. (Image of cable i'm talking about below.) 

 

  

 

Is it possible to get one that will supply power to 5+ Drives? Ideally I dont want multiple cables running if i can get one decent one and run that instead.

and advice/tips would be apprecaited.

 

[testdasi]

Yes and no.

You can get a SATA power cable extension to really run as many output from a single PSU cable as you want.

 

However, the power draw (i.e. current) on the cable can exceed what it is rated for and causes it to literally melt.

This can happen even without actual failure of the connector / cable due to HDD power surge when spinning up.

When this happens, at best, your PC smells really bad and you need to rebuild parity due to drives dropping offline but at worst, your disks are dead.

Note: not that it will definitely happen, just that the chance of it happening increases with every additional drive you add to the same line.

 

So you are better off running multiple cables (i.e. using multiple plugs on the PSU).

Edited December 7, 2019 by testdasi