Thunderbolt bus-powered 3.5" drives?

[maxiedaniels]

Curious, if I buy a Thunderbolt enclosure, can I power a 3.5" 4TB 7200rpm HDD? I've seen online that Thunderbolt supports 10W, which I would think is plenty.. but I also don't see any drives (well, only one) that states it doesn't need an adapter..

 

[Blue Fox]

It's not enough. During spinup, 3.5" disks take about 30w.

 

[maxiedaniels]

Damn. Well, thank you for the response, I couldn't find that information anywhere lol

 

[ArthurFM]

In theory, would a 3.5" HDD in a USB 3.1 enclosure be able to be bus-powered since it supports upto 100 watts?

 

[metril]

@ArthurFM

In theory, yes. At the moment, we do not have devices that support that much of a power output.

 

[westrock2000]

The "30 Watts" is only for a very short amount of time (0.5 - 1 sec), but Thunderbolt itself is only rated to 10W. Not sure what the "burst" power rating might be for Thunderbolt. But regardless, on the surface of it, the 12V requirement of a 3.5" is too much.

Remember that Amps x Voltage = Watts (so in this case 2.0 Amps x 12V would be 24 watts).
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/spinPower-c.html