File server power supply

H

htpc_user

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 27, 2008
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My power went out yesterday while I was at work, and when I went to turn my file server back on I found that it was dead. My first guess was the power supply, and it turns out I was correct. It was the Corsair 430 watt model regularly seen for cheap after rebate.

My first thought was just to buy another one of those. But then I was wondering, should I get a lower wattage, efficient power supply... something in the 300 watt range maybe? It has a socket 775 35 watt Celeron, a stick of RAM, and 4 hard drives. I doubt I'd have more than that in it, maybe a 5th hard drive. It does run 24/7, but is the power usage negligible between something smaller and the 430 watt? One reason I might like to have a little higher wattage is I've thought about doing away with the file server, and if I do that then a PSU with higher wattage might be more beneficial to have to put in another system.
 
I'd never touch a 300 watt power supply for any system. The PSUs in that wattage range are going to be cheaply made very low end stuff for the most part. Even on a low-end server like that I'd be thinking about a decent 500 watt PSU.

Then again, if you were considering the retirement of the server, you could take this as a sign. :)
 
I saw a Seasonic 300 watt PSU. It says it's an OEM, but then I wondered if it was actually made by Seasonic or just their name slapped on it.

I thought about using 2 external hard drives connected to my TP-Link router's USB ports and doing away with the PC but when I experimented I never could see the drive on my network. I think my USB hard drive was not staying on though since it was 3.0, and the router's ports are 2.0. I don't think the router was able to keep it powered on. I need to experiment more.
 
I haven't played with the router based NAS stuff, but could see why that might fit for some uses.

Id' make sure you have the latest TP-Link firmware, and then it looks like you just open the share
or map a drive as usual. This page doesn't show any user security involved.

http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-325.html

If you can't get the USB 3.0 drive to work, you could try a cheap USB 2.0 enclosure for the drive.
Just pull the drive and swap it into the other case.
 
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