Solving SSD Power Spike Issues

The following guest post was contributed by Doug Dumitru the CTO of Easy Computing Company (EasyCo), a software R&D company which develops and markets SSD performance enhancement solutions

Doug Dumitru, EasyCoIt would appear that you could build an all-SSD array by simply replacing all of the HDDs in a cabinet with SSDs.  I tried that and ran into some surprising issues that were very confusing at first.

SSD spec sheets, might lead you to believe that power is just not an issue.  For example, Samsung lists the power use for a 512GB 830 SSD at 0.127W (typical) for “Active Power Use”.  This implies very low demands on the system power supply.

If you do some more research, you find that the peak power usage is a lot higher.  AnandTech, in a review article reports sequential write power draw at 5.14W and random write power draw at 5.8W. In that 2.5” SSDs use the 5V power rail exclusively, this is more than Continue reading “Solving SSD Power Spike Issues”