SATA power connectors - where to get them ?

You thinking that a cap is all it takes to quell any spur is a tell about your grasp of DC power provision.

No, idiot, a 'high value cap alone' does not cause ANY 'spikes in the power grid'.

Another tell that you are a layman attempting an engineering task.

The very least you should do is call a reputable power supply company and ask an engineer why your build is dangerous and poorly conceived.

You would WANT a supply that monitors EACH drive feed. THEN you could set up the hot swap thing.

As it stands, NO, you CANNOT simply pull one out hot.

Why are your posts devoid of useful info and full of personal attacks ?

For a moment I wandered off in sci.electronics.pissing.contest ...

As usual, many "advices" , none of them relevant, many related to penile length measurements...

On May 3, 7:00=A0am, Brane2 wrote: [...]

Welcome to usenet!

Well, there's a computer in our server room with redundant SATA drives, and the _power_ connectors are the same 4-pin Molex as IDE drives have been using since there have been desktop PCs.

Are you talking about SATA data connectors?

Thanks, Rich

Old 4-pin Molex hase several problems:

- it's crap

- it has no hotplug capabilities - if at the moment of hot insert +5V and +12V lines make contact before GND, there is a big chance that your drive will croak...

- it has no support for staggered spin-up

- almost no modern SATA HDD suports it.

- it has no 3.3V line

Yes, you can get adapter for SATA 15pole power connector, but that way you just retain all disadvantages with no real benefit.

No, I'm interested in 15-pin SATA power connectors, preferably for cable. If you check available versions, you will find that ones that are for cable are simplified and do not implement full standard. Power Connector for cable has effectively just 5 x 3-prong pins and it makes use of standard decision to group every line into 3 consecutive pins. With one exception- standard has use for pin 11 for activity LED/ spin-up staggering, which is on cable connector on GND pin.

Also, full implementation has hot-insert capability, since not all pins/poles are equally long. One pole on each 3-pole line is meant for powering electronics, so GND lines for electronics meet first, next are power poles on 12/3,3/5V lines for electronics and GND for motors and finaly power lines for motors.

In contrast, all poles on cable version of the connector seem to be equally long.

Conversely, I do not seem to be able to find version for PCB that is just power connector- they all seem to offer just pair 7 pole data connector + 15-pole power connector

BTW: spin-up staggering seems very doable even without the use of pin

11, but it would surely be fine to have it. There are AFAIK two ways to SW do it, but not all drives implement both correctly, so why not use HW signal that was meant for the job from the start. Well, from SATA-II specs...

Also drive activity LED signal for RAID seems like a very nifty thing...

Regards,

Brane2

SATA-II already has provisions for stagerred spin-up. You can either use pin-11 for it or configure drive to spin-up when it gets command from the host. Aforementioned Samsung hass peak current that is at most 2A ( according to specs), which mean 25W headroom should cover it, if you spin-up one drive per second or so.

Sure. Only thing is- you have found bazillion elcheapo ADAPTERS and not many CONNECTORS. And even if one could weed out some link with a CONNECTOR, that would be elcheapo version of cable connector without different pin lengths, needed for hot insert and without separate pin

2. IOW, nothing useful there...

I've namaged to get my hands on fresh SATA standard.

State of the matters is that although SATA fully supports hotswap, on- cable power connector does not.

IOW, there are no SATA power connector for cable that has multiple contact matings etc- just those combined ones, meant for backplanes etc...

Which means that you would need a custom power supply where EACH and EVERY power cable was managed by the supply and RAID software.

I knew that you were full of shit when you made that stupid claim about being able to pull a drive while it was running (spooled up).

You cannot, and your grasp of hot swap is about as deep as your grasp of this entire segment of the industry. Right at zero.

What you should have done is LISTEN TO and TAKE some of the many advices you were given here.

What you did was mouth off like a little bitch at each and every one.

So, the question is... why the f*ck did your retarded ass come here to start with?

ut

Quote from SATA specs:

6.8 Precharge and Device Presence Detection For a storage subsystem, hot-plug capability is required as well as the ability to seamlessly handle presence detection in those cases where the storage subsystem may remove power to individual receptacles. 6.8.1 Device Requirements In order to accommodate hot-insertion with the use of the precharge feature as well as a means for presence detection, Serial ATA devices shall bus together all power delivery pins for each supply voltage. 6.8.2 Receptacle Precharge (Informative) The Serial ATA device connector has been specifically designed to accommodate a robust hotplug capability. One feature of the device connector is the ability for receptacles to limit the instantaneous inrush current through the use of a precharge scheme. This scheme relies on one power delivery contact for each voltage being longer than the remaining contacts in order to allow power to be delivered through this longer contact through a current limiting device. Figure 109 illustrates one hot-plug power delivery scheme that utilizes the precharge connector feature

e to

To learn from mental giants, obviosly.

The state of the matters is that you are the type of person designers have to make things "monkey proof" over.

You being a mental midget is not something you'll ever achieve escape velocity from. So it matters not what you learn from any of us, you will still always be a mental midget... obviously.

ll

So, which part of the SATA being able of hot-plugging have I so greatly misunderstood ?

It's "put up or f*ck off" time, I guess...

So, do you shut down the drive, THEN remove it, replace it, and THEN 'bring up' the new drive in a still HOT system (that's what hot swap means), or is your dumb definition of hot swap still pulling the drive out under power and in normal operation?

"Hot Swap" means that you do not have to shut down an ENTIRE SYSTEM to change an element of it, like a power supply (why you need more than one), or a failed or failing hard drive.

Itdoes NOT mean that you would pull a power supply while it is providing current, and NO, you should also NOT pull a hard drive without specific "Hot Swap" support in software for the drive I/O backplane or peripheral device circuit card assembly operating software. THAT is where your precious shut down pin gets implemented.

Your boss should fire you, save the cost of your salary and buy a real system from the folks that already know how to make what you seem to think you can "slap together".

If you were a real artist, you would LEARN about the realm you want to take a nose dive into first. That alone would tell you that it is beyond your capacity to simply slap together an array of the size you want. Just use what is already in place. Yeah, there is a cost, but watching you dance around for a year over something that will likely fail miserably is a *loss*. Not a good cost at all.

Just buy something already in the channel, and you will cost your company the least amount.

Just one example. $26k for their top end on that box, and well worth it compared to what you cost for your impaired view of the standards being used, and then paying you for your continued research and personal re-education on the matter, when you are failing to grasp many of the basic premises. Like your stupid remarks about how much power supply is needed and how a "large cap" will fix all your problems".

They support hot swap too, but you can bet that you have to shut the device being swapped down first in a HOT system, not pull the device while it is hot.

You need to study the meaning of THAT term, not your precious failed understanding of the SATA spec as a result of you misinterpreting the meaning of the term "hot swap".

You should have started your education on an XT and then worked up to the pushbutton gui machine you get to use now. You failed to catch some of what they showed you. Probably drunk at school.

Write the meaning of the term "hot swap".

It is time for YOU to put up.

I say that you do not understand what the term means. I say you are a punk that presumed it meant something that it does not.

e a

So now you intend to run into nitpicking ?

How am I ever going to learn anything from giant rat spirit this way ?

o < SNIPed rest of the diatribe>

So, what exactly in SATA spec prevents me from exchanging the drive in working system ?

SATA specs state explicitly that it supports hot-insert and controlled spin-up. Also, drive can be removed from hot system.

So, what exactly is your problem- besides chronic lack of sex and overblown ego ?