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Re: power: HD

I've been using Toshiba's MK3003 3GB hard drive and I was surprised to
find that despite being rated at 5v/800mA, and spec'd at 1.6watts idle, it
is actually alot less than this.  While metering my wearable the power
consumed by the hard drive bounces between 1.6 and 4 watts while its
reading and writing, but when the disk is idle for about 5 seconds it
drops to less than 1 watt. Needless to say, when I reproduced this
several times it was a happy moment. :)

-Paul

R. Paul McCarty / DARS Coordinator /  / x52059
317 Lattimore Hall, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627
Computers don't make mistakes;what they do,they do on purpose.-Dale/KOTH

On Fri, 17 Apr 1998, Mark Willis wrote:

> Fujitsu MK2714TAM 1Gb I have eats 5V 450 mA.  Not too bad.  But it's a
> sick drive (RMA'ing it.)
>   My old Toshiba MK1722 130 Mb drive OTOH eats 5V 700 mA.  Ack!
>   I've noticed that many laptop web sites have no easy guide to average
> power used by their drives, "Oh, you'll just cope with what we give you
> if you don't know any better", I guess.
> 
>   I know one other thing on drives; Some Maxtor drives (at least the
> 3.5" units, probably other manufacturers do this too) use conductive
> plastic contact strips to connect data from the Drive's PC Board to the
> drive heads & etc inside the drive.  A friend who repairs drives just
> detests those drives, says the conductive plastic tends to become
> non-conductive with age & thus the drive fails prematurely - and he
> can't fix it.
>   (Anyone know how to fix said plastic strips?  That knowledge would
> give me temporary godlethood status with this guy <G>)
>   Maxtor used to use conductive plastic for drive POWER connectors as
> well, but quit (high failure rate, maybe?)
> 
>   I've tended to stay with drives that have a ribbon or metallic-contact
> socket connection, since talking to him.  I've had to pull PCB's & clean
> contacts twice total (about to do so for a friend's 1Gb FH SCSI drive,
> but that doesn't count! <G>)
> 
>   Mark Willis
>   
> 
>  wrote:
> > 
> > ok, I'd like to open a dialog on power. I was researching some HDs
> > and I was shocked to discover the disparity in the power cost from
> > drive to drive. I was hoping someone out there could best me in my
> > findings. the drive I currently plan to impliment is a Maxor 2.5",
> > 1.3GB HD, and the power requirements are 5v, 350mA This is the best
> > I've seen in 2.5" drives. Some are as bad as .7A! Well, I am
> > beginning with the HD here. So you have my challenge! The guntlet has
> > been thrown down!
> 

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