BleepingComputer.com: How many internal hdds is too many?

Hey, new user here, I've lurked a bit before tho.

So! I have lots of internal hdds. I have an internal 250gb with my OS's, internal 750gb, and internal 1tb.

I'm thinking about getting another internal 1Tb cuz they're crazy cheap right now, plus Newegg is offering 10% extra off ANY hard drive until 6/22 (promo code EMCHDD10A). My case def has room for at least one more HDD.

My question is... with a 550W power supply, how many hard drives can I support without frying or failing? Is it a matter of the 12V rail and not a matter of total power? I'm not too keen on the specifics.

Here's the power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817103941

On modern drives, 15 watts/drive is a really safe estimate. Most draw about 10-11 watts during read/write ops. Now, how many drives your PSU will support is dependant upon what is in the rest of your system. If you are running an overclocked i7 with SLIed 285GTs, then you might have a problem. You have a good Antec PSU so I really wouldn't worry about it.

According to what I figure you have about 2TB of storage space on 3 hd's.

Out of curiousity, What's the point of all the hard drives ?
Back when they were fairky small capacity a bunch of hard drives made sense.
But since more storage space isn't going to make the computer any faster, & you already have 3 HD = 2TB, what's the point of adding another ?

The reason I'm asking is some people mistakenly equate the capacity of the HD's to the speed of the computer.

[They think a unit with a 250GB hard drive is a lot faster then one with a 100GB hard drive.
The amount of storage space has no affect on how fast a unit is unless the HD has very little [less the 15%] freespace .

This post has been edited by fairjoeblue: 19 June 2009 - 10:32 AM

I've had up to 8 (smaller) hard drives connected at a time...with no problems because of such.

I currently have a 1TB, 1 500GB, and a 40GB (boot) on this system.

Louis

Thanks for the replies

Otay to answer some questions... I'm running a dual AMD 3.1ghz, not overclocked... geforce 9800... can't think of much else that'd matter. It's up to date and quick, but the demands aren't insane.

I'm not a computer noob I know that HD space is just storage not speed ... in fact I prefer green drives because I don't have a high demand for speed from my storage drives, just capacity.

I use the computer for media storage, I like to rip all my movies and music and store them. I have a huuuge library of TV shows and such, and I'm starting to collect HD mkv files. It takes a lot of space to rip everything before I convert it, so I need all that space plus storage space.

So... 4hdds is aight? Esp if there's 2 WD caviar greens?