Hard drive power consumption

[CompilerDude]

Hello,
I have an old Dell Dimension 8200 with what I believe to be a 250W power supply. Do you think it could handle me adding a SATA controller and 4 Hitachi 250GB SATA drives?
Thanx,
C

 

[Vertigo Acid]

This probably should be in Power Supplies...

Anyway, it depends on what the +12v rating of the supply is. The drives will draw the most on spinup, and drop to about 1/4 of that once they've spunup. If your controller has the option to do delayed/staggered spinups, you might be able to get away with it, but you're just asking for trouble.