low power linux PC?

Jon 'maddog' Hall maddog at li.org
Mon Apr 7 09:37:45 EDT 2008


There are a few "notebook drive" enclosures on the market that work off
the power of the USB port with a 2.5 inch disk inside.  You have to be
careful in the selection of the 2.5 inch drives that you put in the
enclosures to have very low power requirements, but you can find 160 GB
drives that do work.

Then some of the "tiny-PC" boxes previously mentioned can drive several
of these drives, providing a "server" that can run at very low power,
albeit with drives external to the main system box (and the system box
might also have its own internal drive).  You may want to test one or
two external enclosure/drive/"tiny-pc" combinations, as you are dealing
with fairly close tolerances here.

I should also mention that if the enclosure/disk combinations need a bit
more power most have an axillary power input to "get it over the hump",
which could be supplied by one power dongle of suitable power output
providing the power to all the units at once.  You might want to look at
the efficiency of these power dongles, however, as some might waste more
power than they provide.

md
-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
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