Curious what the max size hard drive one could use with the ZimaBlade? Limiting factor is the power supply
Think the Zimablade could handle 2 14tb EXOS drives?
Based on the specs for the drives they should be in the wattage range, but curious if anyone has tried larger drives…
Thanks
no one? No one has played with the power output to get an idea? Currently running two 14GB Exos drives with Truenas Scale installed on the Zimablade… but currently running the drives from an external PSU…
Would love to make it self contained… but don’t want to damage a drive
For long-term operation, it is recommended to use an external PSU
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I’m running 2x Seagate IronWolf Pro, 18 TB, Enterprise NAS Internal HDD plus 4TB Team Group MP44 M.2 NVMe drive on NVMe PCIe adapter. It runs from the supplied 12V adapter, and pulls about 3.5A peak at startup, around 1A at idle, and around 2.5A while working hard. Seems stable so far.
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Interesting… I also have an NVMe “drive” on a PCIe adapter and am running two 14TB Exos drives, but I ended up powering those with an external harddrive…
Based on the specs the stock power supply should power a couple drives no problem… good to hear someone is actually doing it successfully.
Thanks
I suspect the main issue is going to be the startup current required to spin up the disks. My setup consumes about 3.5A at 12V for a second or two during startup while the disks are spinning up. This exceeds the 12V 3A rating of the official power supply, although mine seems to make it through.
The startup current is going to vary for different hard drives, but there will always be a higher startup power than steady-state or disk access power. Perhaps you can find startup power on the hard drive datasheet - I’m not sure. It would help a lot to start up one drive at a time. I looked into it some, but it’s a bit challenging - probably the feature you’d want is Power Up In Standby. I haven’t tried it, and it’s possible the ZimaBlade BIOS will spin up the drives at the same time anyway.