[LUAU] Anyone use a Linksys NSLU2? USB hard disk drives are FOSSfriendly?

[David Kiwerski]

R. Scott Belford wrote:
> Brian Chee wrote:
>> My biggest bitch about "normal" machines is that I want my NAS up all 
>> the
>> time and a 350watt power supply could potentially add something like
>> $20/month to my electric bill....
>
> As a partial aside - if a power supply is rated at 350 watts, does 
> this mean that it constantly pulls 350 watts?  If so, I may need to do 
> a costs-benefits analysis of my own pc based file servers.
>
>> /brian chee
>
> --scott
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No, a 350 watt power supply won't draw 350 watts constantly.   There is 
a minimum current draw for the supply, even when idle.   Also, remember 
that the "350 watts" refers to the total output of the supply.   Most 
supplies are 60 to 90% efficient, so the actual current draw would be 
greater than the output specification.   For instance, the Seagate 750Gb 
SATA-2 drives draw 12.6 watts during seek, read and write operations 
(this according to their specs).   The motherboard/cpu compination draws 
a certain amount of power.   One can figure out pretty closely what the 
actual power usage is for a particular computer setup.

DaveK

<http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1596,756,00.html>