Does Icy Dock support staggered power-up?

[volve]

I'm looking for some SATA bays and the Icy Dock series seem to have some nice quality products.

One thing that would be good though is if they could support staggered power-up. Does anyone know? I can't find any details about it.

This whole staggered power-up thing is oddly supported in general. From what I understand it's simply a matter of normal SATA power connectors have a certain couple of pins shorted, right? Can anyone clarify?

Thanks all!

[Faldaani]

Kind of.

Seagate drives (at least 7200.10, .11) will NOT do staggered spin up if pin 11 of the SATA power connector is grounded.

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/sata/100402371a.pdf
Page 46 (or 36), Pin 11 - If grounded, drive does not use deferred spin.


Western digital drives have a jumper to enable staggered spin up until a certain command is sent from the controller, according to the tech specs anyway. Think it was SET_FEATURES. Not sure if this applies to all SATA drives or just RE drives

http://westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/2779-001006.pdf
Page 27, PM2 mode.


As for the ICY dock, as far as I know they use Pin 11 for LED signaling, so it is NOT grounded. Wont swear on it though.

[Ockie]

How many drives do you have to begin with to need a staggered spin? In most cases, you can start with all drives right off bat.

[axan]

# of drives would depend on the psu, a drive needs ~2.5-3 amps to startup so a good 600W should be able to handle about 15 drives without the need of staggered setup, of course it would also depend on the rest of the components. My corsair 620hx can power my freenas system (see sig) with 16 drives no problem and i don't use staggered spin up

[volve]

Well I can always buy a more powerful power supply, but my question was more along the lines of prolonging the life and efficiency of the one I already have. Such a huge spike on power-up is never advisable if it can be avoided, and I as I was looking at some SATA drive bays I thought I'd ask about the Icy Dock's support.

[Ockie]

Well I can always buy a more powerful power supply, but my question was more along the lines of prolonging the life and efficiency of the one I already have. Such a huge spike on power-up is never advisable if it can be avoided, and I as I was looking at some SATA drive bays I thought I'd ask about the Icy Dock's support.

What PSU do you have and how many drives.

[volve]

@Ockie:

Toughpower 850W and 11-19 drives most likely. As I say, I'm sure the PSU can handle it but it would be good to avoid such big power-on spikes if at all possible.

I'm looking for some reliable SATA drive bay modules like the Icy Dock and would probably buy one that supported staggered spin-up over ones that don't.

Any other suggestions besides Icy Dock at all?

[drizzt81]

I quite like the Supermicro 5-in-3 cages. I have the icy dock 4-in-3 and 3-in-2 as well as the supermicro and I like the feel of the SM a lot more. The ID trays are somewhat flimsy, but definetely do their job. The SM unit is just a beast. Due to the lack of SM availability in Europe, I am using the ID's at this point. I would love to help you out with your staggered spinup problem, however I am using onboard controllers (Intel ICH8) and I do not think they support that feature...

I believe to recall that Ockie used to use the SM cages but dropped them in favor of the Athena Power (or other rebranded) cages, but he'll surely be back to comment on his experience with those.

[Ockie]

@Ockie:

Toughpower 850W and 11-19 drives most likely. As I say, I'm sure the PSU can handle it but it would be good to avoid such big power-on spikes if at all possible.

I'm looking for some reliable SATA drive bay modules like the Icy Dock and would probably buy one that supported staggered spin-up over ones that don't.

Any other suggestions besides Icy Dock at all?


850w with only 11-19 drives?! Man, fire that sucker up all go! No need for any staggered spin, it wont hurt the PSU, it has plenty of headroom.

As for the other bay units out of there, I personally prefer Athena/Buffalo/IStar/etc. They are very quiet and they work great, you can switch off individual drives and the signaling leds are built in, no extra wires. I also like the placement of the connectors and such.

Another great brand is the SuperMicro hotswap units, they are quite pricey compaired to the other units, but they cool great... just make sure you are not going to be working right next to the system :)

[volve]

I did some poking today and the 3ware RDC-400 units looks to be the most sturdy and well built for cooling and LED placement, but a) is only 4 drives and I was really looking for 5 bay units, b) is a lot more than all the others, and c) is out of stock at NewEgg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121302&Tpk=N82E16817121302

The SuperMicro wasn't too much more money and looked pretty good but after reading about it, the LEDs are only fully available for the SCSI version. Ie. there are holes for Fault LEDs but they aren't actually hooked-up to anything in the SATA version... ?!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405

The Athena/iStar one looked alright but cooling and weird LED placement seemed a little funky:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995001&Tpk=BP-SATA3051B

Any others I might have missed? The Intel ones looked really nice but I only found SCSI and not SATA variants...

[Faldaani]

I wonder if its possible to hook up the fault LEDs on the supermicro to the fault LED header on a raid controller like one in the Areca series... *ponders*

EDIT: Bunch of close up photos, anyone? =)

[volve]

@Faldaani: According to the user testimonials on NewEgg and other places, the Supermicro's SATA version doesn't HAVE any fault LEDs. The drive trays show them to be there but they simply aren't.

Nice huh? :-/

[Faldaani]

Thats pretty dumb...

Heat-glue + LED + cables -> LED Header? *shrug*