Hello all,
I’m trying to build a Raspberry Pi 5 NAS using the Radxa Penta SATA HAT and four 3.5" HDDs. Everything was going well until I got to connecting the drives, then things went very wrong, and now I’m trying to determine what happened and if I should try again. TL;DR at bottom. Thanks in advance for any help.
Parts list (hyperlinks removed due to limit for new users):
- Raspberry Pi 5, 4 GB
- Radxa Penta SATA HAT
- Stainless Steel Hard Drive Cage, 5.25" to 5 x 3.5" Rack (to hold the HDDs; does not provide power)
- Cable Matters 2-Pack 22-Pin Power and Data SATA Extension Cable, 20 Inches (x2)
- Plugable 2.5G USB-C and USB to Ethernet Adapter
- HP/Toshiba 6TB 128MB MG04ACA600E 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Hard Drive (x4)
- Onn 65W laptop charger
As said above, everything went well and mostly as expected (had some issues assembling the HDD cage) until I started connecting the HDDs. Plugging in one HDD with the Pi 5 & Penta SATA HAT powered on caused everything to shut down. The power supply even seemed to stop providing power (the blue indicator light on it went dark). Same result when powering on the Pi, HAT, and one HDD from power off (to rule out plugging in the HDD while things were running as the problem); the power supply LED was dark, and there were no signs of life.
Through research, I determined that the Onn power supply likely doesn’t provide enough Amps for all four 3.5" HDDs (3.4A max). However, I would think it’d be enough to power just one HDD plus the Pi and HAT, but maybe I’m misunderstanding something.
I then pulled out a known-working ATX desktop PSU to power things via Molex until I received a dedicated PSU. However, the ATX PSU would not power the Pi 5 + HAT alone, without any HDDs connected. I tried each Molex connector on the PSU, but was still unable to power the boards.
I then remembered that the motherboard connector probably needed to be shorted in order for the PSU to provide power without a desktop motherboard connected. To confirm this, I plugged the PSU motherboard and CPU connectors into the motherboard of the PC the PSU came from, plugged one of the PSU Molex connectors into the Pi 5 + HAT + one 3.5" HDD, turned the PSU on, and turned the PC on.
There was a snap, a flash of light, and a small amount of smoke. I quickly cut power at my workbench surge protector. It appears something on the HAT got fried.
So now I’m left wondering what I did wrong / what went wrong, and if it’s possible to get this setup working. I read several forum posts while investigating why the boards weren’t getting power (Undervolted pi5 penta hat, Problems powering Penta SATA HAT and Raspberry Pi 5), but they didn’t clear up my confusion.
TL;DR:
- Will four (4) 6 TB, 3.5" HDDs be able to be powered by the single Molex connector on the Penta SATA HAT plugged into a Raspberry Pi 5?
- If so, are any specific power supplies recommended (maximum wattage, specific brands, etc)?
- Can an example of a power supply that could power this setup be provided?
- Are any modifications to the power supply needed?
- Some questions to satisfy my curiosity if you read the full post:
- What did I do wrong to cause the HAT to get fried?
- Is the Pi + HAT powering off when one HDD was connected while using the Onn power supply expected?