Hard Drive LED Question

[Asgorath]

I have 6 SATA hard drives connected to my motherboard. I house these hard drives in 2 super micro hot swap enclosures. I would preferably like to have the supermicro LED's blink individually for each drive. But knowing that the motherboard only has one hard drive LED header, I would be satisfied with making them all blink. I'll just take some 24 AWG solid core wire and make a custom adapter for the motherboard. No need in hacking up my new supermicro wires.

The question is, what is the current capability of the onboard LED header? will 7 LED's be too much draw on the header? I don't think it will, but please post your thoughts. Maybe you can add some insight to my thinking?

Cheers.

 

[unhappy_mage]

You should be able to build a switching device out of a transistor, if you're worried about it. Or add a controller with more LED outputs.

I would *guess* that the LED header is current limited, so connecting too many devices makes them get less amperage each, rather than burn out the header. But I don't know that.

 

[drizzt81]

the recent supermicro controllers support the SATA-io feature that allows them to blink their LEDs without requiring an external connection.

 

[Asgorath]

the recent supermicro controllers support the SATA-io feature that allows them to blink their LEDs without requiring an external connection.

Fair enough, but why do they come with the sets of wires then? Will the SATA-io feature kick in if I don't connect the wires, but be overridden if I do connect the wires?

 

[unhappy_mage]

The 5-in-3 cages I have came with LED cables so you can connect them to a controller that doesn't have sata-io capability. I imagine there are cages that don't support sata-io as well, so they include the cables in case both ends don't support blinkenlights.