NASLite Network Attached Storage

Here are instructions on how to add a second PSU to your server.

http://www.directron.com/2powersupplies.html

I'd be very careful with that article if I were you - anyone writing about a 1A resistor (see the paragraph on starting a stubborn power supply) is obviously not familiar with the basic concepts of electricity.

I think it is safe to assume that most people will be using ATX power supplies - you can use the ATX related portions of the article if you note the following corrections.

1) The diagram that shows how to use a relay to make the first power supply turn on the second one is incorrectly labelled - the green wire is not power good, but in fact ps_on.

2) The article mentions using a relay that has 4 pins and is rated for 12V DC or higher - you need a relay with a 12V coil - no more and no less - and the relay needs to have normally open contacts.

Use the second power supply ONLY for powering disks, fans or lights - do not use it power anything that connects directly to the system board such as a video card - the voltage outputs of the two power supplies will be slightly different and any attempt to parallel them without the appropriate isolation circuitry will have unpredictable results.

I would also suggest tying the ground rails of the power supplies together to be on the safe side.

Dual power supplies aren't at all necessary. Even with a high end cpu and 2gb of ram you can run a good 350w psu and be fine with 8 HDDs which is more than most cases can hold. The only reason to use more power would be if you had a decent graphics card, which would be a total waste in a naslite box.

If you just feel like tinkering with it I would suggest getting an old computer to mess around with instead of your naslite box. Too much risk in losing your data and having to go through the fun recovery process.

That would depend on your particular hardware, especially the type of disks and whether or not your disk/controller supports staggered spinup.

The startup current of four reasonable sized SCSI disks will drive your average 350W power supply into current limit if they spinup simultaneously - for this reason most SCSI drives wait for a start command from the host adapter. I have not seen this feature on ATA drives, but the last Maxtor SATA drives I purchased do support a random spinup delay which achieves the same thing.