Current drawn by SSDs & HDDs

I have molex connectors to SSDs & HDDs

Is the amount of current drawn by SSDs less than
the HDDs, given these's no platters to spin?

Where can I find the current drawn by these
devices in real time; is this in windows or some
3rd party software?

What is the max current drawn by SSDs & HDDs and
does this vary with the data transfer rate?
Peter

Peter Jason wrote:
I have molex connectors to SSDs & HDDs

Is the amount of current drawn by SSDs less than
the HDDs, given these's no platters to spin?

Where can I find the current drawn by these
devices in real time; is this in windows or some
3rd party software?

What is the max current drawn by SSDs & HDDs and
does this vary with the data transfer rate?
Peter

Buy yourself a clamp-on DC ammeter.
The jaws can be placed around the yellow 12V
wire (motor power) on a 3.5" hard drive. On an SSD,
you'd put the clamp-on ammeter around the red +5V wire.

Details on the wires can be found here. Compare
your "properly colored" wiring computer, to your
"all black ribbon" power supplies, to figure out
where to make measurements on newer systems.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/psucon...onnectors.html

The manufacturer provides some information on
power consumption, but it isn't always the
information you want. Hard drives usually have
reasonable specs. Sometimes the spin-up current
is missing from 2.5" hard drives (that's around
5V @ 1A or so and makes it hard to run off
a USB 5V 0.5A port).

NVMe drives are going to be hard to measure,
as there are no exposed wires. You would need
a PCI Express carrier card, one with breakouts
for power, to make a measurement. An NVMe drive
is apparently always going to be more than 5W
consumption.

Sure, the power consumption has a proportionality
to write speed, but I don't have a read-made
table showing any quirks. It should be
linear with bandwidth, but who really knows.
If your NVMe drew 5W at 2GB/sec, you could use
linear interpolation between 5W and maybe half
a watt when it's idle or something.

My SATA SSDs here generally fit within the USB2
footprint of 5V @ 0.5A. One I tested the other day
was maybe 0.3A or 0.35A during sustained write.
Drives with Sandforce chips draw up to 7W peak.

Intel Optane is pretty hard on electricity. It
should be higher than regular flash.

A clamp-on DC ammeter is fine, as long as there
is a power cable you can make the measurement on.
(You must be able to gain access to an individual
wire - slapping the meter around the whole cable,
the magnetic field cancels out and the reading is 0.)

Drives that plug into stuff with no exposed cables,
that's going to be a chore to get at.

A $20 Harbor Freight multimeter, requires wiring
the ammeter portion in series with the load.
Which is a prohibitive nuisance, and why I use
a clamp-on DC ammeter. The clamp-on DC ammeter
also allows measuring out-sized currents.
For example, when the starter motor in my car
had problems, the clamp-on DC ammeter "peak"
reading feature, determined the starter was
drawing 150 amps. My regular multimeter measured
the battery terminals dipping to 9V (my multimeter
has "peak" detection in both directions).
The starter was getting 1350W while "stalled".
I can measure anywhere from 10mA to 400A with it.

Paul

On 18-6-2018 2:38, Peter Jason wrote:
I have molex connectors to SSDs & HDDs

Is the amount of current drawn by SSDs less than
the HDDs, given these's no platters to spin?

Where can I find the current drawn by these
devices in real time; is this in windows or some
3rd party software?

What is the max current drawn by SSDs & HDDs and
does this vary with the data transfer rate?
Peter

Cut a wire and put an amp meter there.

Or produce a male/female molex pair with a connection for an amp meter
between computer supply and disk.

then measure current.

There is no magical solution for what you want.

A shunt capacitor across the amp meter might be a good idea.

1Uf cap should do it.

On 6/17/2018 5:38 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
I have molex connectors to SSDs & HDDs

Is the amount of current drawn by SSDs less than
the HDDs, given these's no platters to spin?

Where can I find the current drawn by these
devices in real time; is this in windows or some
3rd party software?

What is the max current drawn by SSDs & HDDs and
does this vary with the data transfer rate?
Peter

Found a few numbers:

Do SSDs use more or less power than HDDs, and by how much?
https://www.quora.com/Do-SSDs-use-mo...nd-by-how-much

The Power Consumption vs Workload chart is interesting
https://superuser.com/questions/5897...ion-ssd-vs-hdd

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 20:02:07 -0700, Mike S
wrote:

On 6/17/2018 5:38 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
I have molex connectors to SSDs & HDDs

Is the amount of current drawn by SSDs less than
the HDDs, given these's no platters to spin?

Where can I find the current drawn by these
devices in real time; is this in windows or some
3rd party software?

What is the max current drawn by SSDs & HDDs and
does this vary with the data transfer rate?
Peter

Found a few numbers:

Do SSDs use more or less power than HDDs, and by how much?
https://www.quora.com/Do-SSDs-use-mo...nd-by-how-much

The Power Consumption vs Workload chart is interesting
https://superuser.com/questions/5897...ion-ssd-vs-hdd

Thanks to all. The reason for the question was to
rate very-flexible multi-stranded flexes of small
sizes (13 strands x 012mm cable) to replace the
stiff ones in normal molex connectors.

Since I have many HDDs in the computer case the
tangle of the long multi-plug molexs is beyond
belief, and now since I have small powerboards
inside the case, I want to give each drive its own
cable & plug.

On Tue, 19 Jun 2018 10:51:33 +1000, Peter Jason wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 20:02:07 -0700, Mike S
wrote:

On 17/06/2018 5:38 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
I have molex connectors to SSDs & HDDs

Is the amount of current drawn by SSDs less than
the HDDs, given these's no platters to spin?

Where can I find the current drawn by these
devices in real time; is this in windows or some
3rd party software?

What is the max current drawn by SSDs & HDDs and
does this vary with the data transfer rate?
Peter

Found a few numbers:

Do SSDs use more or less power than HDDs, and by how much?
https://www.quora.com/Do-SSDs-use-mo...nd-by-how-much

The Power Consumption vs Workload chart is interesting
https://superuser.com/questions/5897...ion-ssd-vs-hdd

Thanks to all. The reason for the question was to
rate very-flexible multi-stranded flexes of small
sizes (13 strands x 012mm cable) to replace the
stiff ones in normal molex connectors.

Since I have many HDDs in the computer case the
tangle of the long multi-plug molexs is beyond
belief, and now since I have small powerboards
inside the case, I want to give each drive its own
cable & plug.

You might consider having less larger capacity drives.