low power linux PC?

[Alex Hewitt]

On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 09:37 -0400, Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
> 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

As an aside, I noticed that most of the low cost network hardware
vendors provide power cubes that are very simple transformer/AC bridge
designs or alternatively switched type supplies. The switched types are
generally much smaller and more efficient. I have one Netgear VPN router
that came with a 12 volt power cube of the former type that must weigh
close to a pound. Later models came with a switched variant that may
have weighed 3 or 4 ozs. The switched supply also generates less heat.

-Alex