Question Can I power four 3.5" drives off of a single 12v + 5v power adapter?

[Huessy]

I want to build a Pi based NAS out of some old 3.5" drives I have lying around. In the spirit of keeping it small and simple, I want to limit the number of plugs coming out of the thing and I'm looking into ways to create a single, shared power supply for the drives to use instead of using 4 SATA to USB adapters that require 1 plug per drive.

I've found this power supply (https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Hard...0181923&sr=8-9&keywords=sata+ac+power+adapter) which in theory would allow me to attach to an IDE 4 pin to SATA power adapter and power one drive.

I'm wondering if it is possible to add yet another cable to this unholy cable salad, a SATA power spliter, and power all 4 drives off of the one ac adapter. I'm hesitant to do this for several reasons, namely that I have no idea about how electricity works and though I understand a single 3.5" drive needs 13W to spin up, I'm very uncertain that my magic solution will allow me to power all 4 off of the same plug.

Those of you that have more than a pre-schooler's understanding of electricity, I would love some guidance. Would my power solution short circuit everything or am I on the right track to saving hundreds of dollars on prebuilt NAS solutions?

 

[Alabalcho]

I don't think this adapter will work. It is rated for 2Amps on 5V and 12V rails, and 3.5" drives usually need an amp each.

You will have other challenges as well: How your RPi will provide for 4 SATA ports?

And last but not least: These "prebuild NAS solutions" will give you much better throughput than RPi, and don't have to cost hundreds of dollars. RPi' Ethetnet port hangs off (slow) USB 2.0 port with other perifperals sharing that bus as well.

 

[Huessy]

I don't think this adapter will work. It is rated for 2Amps on 5V and 12V rails, and 3.5" drives usually need an amp each.

You will have other challenges as well: How your RPi will provide for 4 SATA ports?

And last but not least: These "prebuild NAS solutions" will give you much better throughput than RPi, and don't have to cost hundreds of dollars. RPi' Ethetnet port hangs off (slow) USB 2.0 port with other perifperals sharing that bus as well.

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. So much for my ingenious plan to build a fully contained Pi NAS.

 

[popatim]

You could use a pico psu with a laptop power brick... something like This Pico's are what car guys use to have a pc in their cars.

 

[Huessy]

You could use a pico psu with a laptop power brick... something like This Pico's are what car guys use to have a pc in their cars.

Do you think I could get away with putting a SATA power splitter on this to power 4 drives or would I only really be able to do one drive per ac adapter?

 

[popatim]

It has an operating spec of 4amps on the 12v line with a peak of 7 amps (84w) for 60 seconds, more then enough for 4hdd's even when spinning up all 4 at the same time. If you want more 'cushion' then up to the 150w piece. It has 8a & 10a respectively.

For reference the:
90 is 5a/7a
120 is 7a/10a max