Too many drives

How many hard drives can we pack into a consumer workstation? A hard drive requires its maximum power draw upon initial spinup

Considerations

• Space
• Heat
• Max 12V power draw, PSU
• Max 5V power draw, PSU (not relevant for newer drives)
• Max power draw, cables + connectors
• Controllers

Seagate Exos 18

From the manual, we learn a peak DC draw of 2.88A @ 12V, 34.56W(!). A typical AWG18 wire can safely conduct 9.5A. A AWG16 can do about 15. Without staggered spinup, it is thus probably unsafe to put more than 5 drives on a single AWG16 wire, or 3 on AWG18.

See also

• "Power Draw of Enterprise vs Consumer Class Drives", 45drives
• "Staggered spinup and its Effect on Power Draw", 45drives
• Seagate Exos 18 manual