Hi,

I've got an array of drives that are hardware controlled and need suggestions for ad/dc power supplies. The supply I was using, a lambda that I picked out of a salvage shop, doesn't seem to provide a steady enough voltage so I drop drives about once a month.

In my situation, limited budget, I'm guessing that dedicated AT supplies would do the job. I've simply mounted the drives to a shelf because I can't afford a drive chasis with scsi backplane and cabling.

Am I correct in that AT supplies provide power when turned as opposed to ATX which require that they're connected to a MoBo? If yes, does it seem reasonable to get a couple of $30 250 watt ps/2 style supplies and power four or five drives from each supply?

While shopping for AT supplies, I've noticed that brand X model Y 250watt supply costs $30.00 while the same model with 300watt will be double the price and again at 400watt the price will jump to four or five times. Why buy a 400watt supply at $180.00 when when two 250watt supplies can be purchased for $60.00 USD?

Am I missing something on these pricing descrpencies? I really don't see where the componentry for the more expensive drive is any better than within the cheap ones.

If anyone has thoughts, suggestions, experiences, please do share.

rtp

just off the top of my head...

Are the prices you mention for AT power supplies? Because seeing as how they are old technology you could very well pay extra simply because they are harder to find and not worth keeping in stock for all but speciality retailers. Also, during the time of AT power supplies, the 400w range was usually reserved for pricy servers so finding one in that range will be costly while for ATX, 400w supplies are the norm these days if not considered small so finding an ATX 400w would be cheap.

You are correct that ATX supplies usually need to be connected to a motherboard but if you are technical enough to hook some bare drives up to a power supply on a shelf then you may be able to handle getting an ATX supply to power up. Basically, the ATX supply has some pins on the mobo connector that can in theory be shorted out to get the supply to power up; Now I couldn't tell you which ones because I only saw a reference to it once in passing but I bet you could google for pinouts of the ATX's mobo connector and figure it out.

Maybe that helps, sorry I can't really give you more specifics but you did ask for thoughts and suggestions so I shared mine