Powering Pi

I also did some work on the NFS server last week. Its a Pi3 model B+ with a PiDrive and the Y split power cable. It was plugged into one of my 5 port USB chargers which can provide up to 2 amps.

I plugged in a Seagate Expansion 3TB drive which has its own 12 volt power adapter. While copying the files across the power LED on the Pi kept going off for a couple of seconds before coming back on. Thinking the USB charger might not be up to the job I plugged it into one of the official 2 amp power adapters. Same problem. Even after I had unplugged the PiDrive so only the Seagate was plugged in the power LED still kept going on and off when accessing the disk.

The 2 amp official Pi power supply obviously is not enough. Its no surprise they have a 2.5 amp power supply these days. I decided to get a couple of the 2.5 amp power adapters to go with the two PiDrives and have gone back to using just the PiDrive.

I will have to try it again some time when I need more disk space. What I'd really like to try is having 3 or 4 drives plugged into a Pi with them running ZFS on Linux. Dream on. ZFS requires a 64 bit operating system and Raspbian is 32 bit at the moment. And then there is the lack of memory...