Power Consumption of idle RAID (IDE)

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

I am thinking about getting a new computer and that means I'll be moving to SATA RAID 1. But I have two 80GB IDE drives in RAID right now and I'm planning on keeping them as a RAID file repository on my new machine. The only thing that concerns me is power consumption. My hope is that any RAID setup won't be using excessive amount of power when it is idle (like my file repository will be most of the time). I'm sure different motherboards handle it differently, but is there a general consensus on how motherboards handle idle RAID setups? Thanks in advance.

 

[ribbon13]

Most of the power consumption is the motor. If you want your RAID to spin down when idle, you'll have to look at your RAID controller.

 

[Pariah]

RAID functionality doesn't consume any power at idle, the drives do. If you have 2 drives they consume "x" amount of power at idle (something under 20W's), you RAID them and they use the same "x" amount of power at idle.

 

[Zepper]

The motors (12V) usually take less than 1A at idle and up to 2A on startup. Very little power is needed on the 5V side usually well under 1A except perhaps at the highest stress level.

.bh.