power supply for hard drive case

[kjp007]

I have an external hard drive enclosure with 8 bays and it's own micro atx power supply. The enclosure has two multilane connectors on the outside so I can connect the enclosure to my highpoint 2522 raid controller.

I have recently had the hard drives 'failing' and dropping off the raid.

However when I power the drives off my computer power supply (corsair 620w) the hard drives run fine, didn't fail, and there weren't any errors.

I found an old ATX power supply and jumpered it so it ran without a motherboard. Then I hooked up the hard drives to that power supply and the hard drives 'failed' immediately. I suspect there was something wrong with that power supply. the ATX power supply was an "icute 450w", probably a generic low quality power supply.

I want to get another power supply for the hard drives.
Is it safe to run a power supply for a long time with it jumpered so it runs without a motherboard? If not, is there a resistor or circuit I can put in place of the jumper?

Thanks in advance

 

[Zero82z]

I want to get another power supply for the hard drives.

You should generally ration about 25W per drive just to stay on the safe side, so since you'll be running 8 drives, any decent PSU with 250W or more will be plenty. I recommend something like this if you want something very reliable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151059

Is it safe to run a power supply for a long time with it jumpered so it runs without a motherboard?

Yes. That's essentially how a computer tells the PSU to stay running.

 

[SJetski71]

and it's own micro atx power supply.

Does the replacement have to be micro-atx or ? Because if it does then it limits your options a whole lot.

You might be able to cram an SFX sized Seasonic in there but a good standard sized ATX 80plus certified powersupply would be best.

 

[venm11]

Question - when you were testing your drives with the PC's power supply, was that everything running at once? That is, PC + hp raid + 8 drive array, all on the corsair psu?

 

[kjp007]

Question - when you were testing your drives with the PC's power supply, was that everything running at once? That is, PC + hp raid + 8 drive array, all on the corsair psu?

I was only running 4 drives at that time. It will be 5 drives when I get my RMA from Western Digital. Can't afford more drives at the present.

maybe I'll post 5x1tb raid benchmark tests when everything is up and running smoothly.

 

[venm11]

Ok. You're probably right, it's probably a bad psu in the array. I was actually wondering if the external sas/sata (?) connector was the culprit, as was so often the case with scsi.