Question Fewer Bigger Drives or More Smaller Drives - Better / Safer for Power?

[Oasis Curator]

Currently, I have about 5 2TB drives.
I'm looking to replace them with either two or three 8TB drives or two 12TB drives - depending on the bank balance and how much I'd get selling the 2TB drives.

But from a power perspective, what is better?

From a cabling point of view, the bigger drives would be much better and I guess from a power consumption point of view, the bigger drives would be better here too?

 

[USAFRet]

Power consumption either way is mostly irrelevant.

For instance, an 8TB Seagate BArracuda consumes about 5.3W in use
https://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/3-5-barracudaDS1900-14-2007US-en_US.pdf

A 12TB WD Red, 6.0W
https://documents.westerndigital.co...duct-brief-western-digital-wd-red-pro-hdd.pdf

 

[mu_p1]

It doesn't consume much voltage. So if you get a 8/2/12 HDD's, that means it won't consume that much voltage.