External power supply question (media center related)

[dbanimal]

Hi all,

I currently have 5 1TB hard drives (internal, not external) with a bunch of HD videos on them. What I have been doing lately is hooking up a few of them in my PC and using my PS3 as a media server to watch everything from my PC to the big screen. My problem is that space is limited in my computer case and there would be a ton of heat generated if I ran all 5 of my hard drives within that case (6 including my main drive) so I'm going to build an external enclosure just big enough to hold all 5 drives and have multiple fans to exhaust all the heat. I already have enough SATA external ports on my PC but I'm lacking power. I was wondering if anyone knows of a 12v external power supply (similar to that of an internal ATX supply) that can be used to power my SATA drives? Or, does anyone know what the trigger is to turn an internal power supply on? Normally when you press the power button on your PC that will trigger the internal supply to turn on. I know it's probably a matter of some pins going closed from an open state that triggers it. Would anyone know what that would be?

I realize I could just build another system with tons of bays and air space but I'm on a budget and building an enclosure would be very cheap and simple, it's just the power to the drives that I need to figure out. If anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it!!

[aedipuss]

i don't remember the specifics of keeping a p.s. turned on but if you search "bench testing a power supply" it should get you the info.

[dbanimal]

Thanks a million! I did a google search for "bench testing an atx power supply" and it brought me to this site:

(See second post down)
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/295188-Anyone-here-ever-bench-test-or-repair-an-ATX-power-supply

I just tried it on a spare power supply and it fired right up!! I guess I'll go this route as it's simple enough!

[redwudz]

What you have planned should work OK, but it might be simpler to just upgrade the original PC to a larger case.

I have several servers with eight to nine hard drives each and the drives run fairly cool. They do have front fans that blow over the HDDs. They all use 500W power supplies as HDDs don't really need a lot of power. The biggest power draw in a PC is generally the CPU, then the video card, if it's a high performance model, then the Northbridge, the RAM and the optical drives.

Using an external box, you may need to turn it on first so the main PC can see the drives on boot. Depends if your PC has hot boot capability.

[dbanimal]

Thanks and I did consider a larger case but I also wanted the option to not have to turn on those drives and leave running all the time. My PC is generally on for most of the day if not a few days at a time. I actually have a good design for what I'm planning on, it's compact and should be very simple to use, especially now that my power question has been solved!
And, it will be easily portable!

[redwudz]

Sounds good. What I did with my servers is to connect them to my LAN system. Then I use a WOL program (Wake On Lan) to turn them on when I need them. http://magicpacket.free.fr/

I also set up the servers to automatically shut down after 30 minutes of inactivity, so it works very well and does save energy. I have the WOL program on all my PCs and it only takes a few seconds to turn on one of the servers. I try to set them to go to sleep or hibernate when they go offline, but it also wakes them if they are off.

Maybe not much use to you just now, but if you add a few more drives in separate cases as servers, it might be handy.

You can also have total remote control over the servers with a program like UltraVNC. http://www.uvnc.com/

Just a couple of ideas to file away for the future.