After buying a nice little Energy meter, i was shocked at the amount of power my server ( 8 core, 8gb, 4.5TB ( 6 * 750 ) ) & my main pc ( e6600, Geforce 9800GX2, 4GB ) have been using ( 250w + 200w ) on idle! I know, the server is overkill, but it all started with buying some cheap ( great dels ) parts left, and some parts right, and before you knew it, you end up with that.
So, i started my little project to combine my server & PC, into a workstation/server with little power drain that runs 24/7 ( and sell off the server & main pc ).
For the primary storage i have decided on 4 Western Digital WD10EACS 1000GB ( 3.9w ) in raid 5. That was a no brainer.
But, because of the slower 5400rpm of the storage 1TB HD's, i decided to have a separate raid for the OS, Games, etc.
My idear was:
3 * Samsung HD403LJ 16MB ( 3.2w idle ) in Raid 5 ( except the /boot in Raid 1 ).
4 * Western Digital WD10EACS 1000GB 32MB ( 3.9w idle ) in Raid 5
In this configuration the main raid uses +- 10w idle, and the main archive uses +- 12w. And as the main archive is that, it will be in standby 70% of the time, limiting the drain of power to +-4w.
Now, the question being, are the number provided by Samsung, accurate? Because its at times odd.
Some 8MB drives are +- 3 a 4w idle, and other 8MB drives are 7 or 8w idle. In the 16MB cache serie, you see the exact same pathern.
While a 300GB version has a 7w, the above listed 400GB has only 3.2w idle... Part of it can be explained with difference in number of plates, yet, the newer ones with only 1 plate, actually use more, then the dual plate that this 400GB seems to use.
Strange is it not
Its almost like the 320GB plates for instance seem to create a much higher power drain.
And a very important point that i did notice, every drive with a 3.x w idle, has a weight figure of +-450g, the 5 a 6w idle are listed as +-550g, and the 7w or higher, all are noted as +-650g. Anybody else noticed this, and can it be confirmed that the HD403LJ really uses 3.2w?
It looks to me that you can't base yourself on the plate Capacity thats give for the drive for the number of plates, but the weight seems to be the key. Ps: check out the HD082GJ 80GB drive's idle watt