SATA DOM Power?

[FreeNASBob]

Does anybody happen to know what the idle power consumption is on the SATADOM-MV 3ME series? I'm going to set up a small zpool for .system on a separate drive to allow the raidz2 array spin down when not in use. I've been looking into SSDs, but even the Samsungs renowned for being power misers use more power than a laptop HDD. Now I'm looking at the SATA DOMs before breaking down and going with a cheap laptop HDD. I'm hoping the SATA DOM functions more like a thumb drive and doesn't consume any real power except during reads/writes.

 

[cyberjock]

Most are a max of 1w. AKA not something you should fret at all.

 

[Ericloewe]

Does anybody happen to know what the idle power consumption is on the SATADOM-MV 3ME series? I'm going to set up a small zpool for .system on a separate drive to allow the raidz2 array spin down when not in use. I've been looking into SSDs, but even the Samsungs renowned for being power misers use more power than a laptop HDD. Now I'm looking at the SATA DOMs before breaking down and going with a cheap laptop HDD. I'm hoping the SATA DOM functions more like a thumb drive and doesn't consume any real power except during reads/writes.

Max power usage might be higher, but they win the race to idle by a mile and thus end up using less power. A small DOM should use even less power, though.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Max power usage might be higher, but they win the race to idle by a mile and thus end up using less power. A small DOM should use even less power, though.

In the specs I found the idle power was higher than for laptop drives by a mile.

 

[Ericloewe]

In the specs I found the idle power was higher than for laptop drives by a mile.

Maybe if it's spinned down. How often is that going to be the case?

 

[FreeNASBob]

Maybe if it's spinned down. How often is that going to be the case?

I mean the active idle SSD power was greater on a lot of drives than the active idle laptop HDD power.

 

[Ericloewe]

I mean the active idle SSD power was greater on a lot of drives than the active idle laptop HDD power.

That I find hard to believe, unless we're talking about old SSDs from the beginning of the decade. I guess it might happen if the drive is doing garbage collection, but it's still weird.

 

[FreeNASBob]

That I find hard to believe, unless we're talking about old SSDs from the beginning of the decade. I guess it might happen if the drive is doing garbage collection, but it's still weird.

It is weird, but several reviews reach the same conclusion. Keeping in mind that the Hitachi 2.5" HDD I'm looking at idles at 0.55W:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6884/crucial-micron-m500-review-960gb-480gb-240gb-120gb/9
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-840-evo-review-1tb-ssd,3567-13.html

It looks like a little more than half of the SSD's use more power than a laptop drive. Given the price premium I don't think it's the route to go for my build.