How many HDs can a G4 tower power, & max HD size

jdl8422 said:

I am looking to buy a used G4 Dual 1ghz M8667LL/A and use it as a file server. What is the max amount of hard drives the stock power supply can power? My plan is to have one internal as a boot drive then use a ESATA PCI card to power and external enclosure. The external enclosure will have 8 or so HDs and use a port multiplier to have one ESATA out to the G4. Is this computer capable and or powerful enough? I guess my main concern will be finding a ESATA card compatible with this computer. Thanks

Also, does anyone know of a power supply that can power multiple HDs without needing a motherboard?

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I would imagine the computer is capable, but the main problem is the PCI connector which the eSATA board would be connected to; the bus can limit throughput. I'm not too familiar with 1GHz Dual, personally...

FOr your PSU, there are several creative options - the first is a secondary "optical bay" PSU that has relatively low power(400W, usually? Once again, not too familiar). The other option that I can think of is another regular power supply with some wires for the mobo connector soldiered together so that the two PSUs are wired in parallel. I think the Samsung guys did this for their 24-SSD machine that Tesselator showed a while back...

If you're using eSATA drives, the G4's PSU is irrelevant to how many drives you can use. eSATA does not provide power. Your external enclosure will need its own power supply.