Will IKEA KOPPLA power supply 5V 2.4A work with a Seagate Expansion Portable Drive, without external power source?

[niska]

I'm planning on adding one external HDD to my RPi. I read some guides saying that HDD needs external power source. But other say that if you have a good power source then external power source is not needed if only using one HDD.

I'm currently using a IKEA KOPPLA power supply 5V 2.4A with a short no name cable. Will this supply one Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 2TB (powered by USB)?

If I instead buy the official RPi power source, would it supply one Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 2TB?

Thanks

[FTrevorGowen]

I'm planning on adding one external HDD to my RPi. I read some guides saying that HDD needs external power source. But other say that if you have a good power source then external power source is not needed if only using one HDD.

I'm currently using a IKEA KOPPLA power supply 5V 2.4A with a short no name cable. Will this supply one Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 2TB (powered by USB)?

If I instead buy the official RPi power source, would it supply one Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 2TB?

Thanks

A quick search of "IKEA KOPPLA" showed several devices that are (multi-output) USB chargers which, in general, are not the same as a proper power supply in that a ('phone) charger, even if labeled 5V 2.4A, is not required to (and probably won't) provide 5V when 2.4A is being drawn - the voltage is likely to be ~4V , just above the (discharged) voltage of the battery they're intended to charge. FWIW, and to illustrate what is required of a true power supply, see my measurements of the two variations of the official power supply here: http://www.cpmspectrepi.uk/raspberry_pi ... _Models.29
W.r.t. the "Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 2TB (powered by USB)" w/o details of the (maximum) current it can draw and which model of Pi you have no-one can easily comment further.
Trev.

[niska]

Thanks for the reply.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. If I use the official power supply 5V 2.5A, would it work with the Seagate Expansion Portable Drive?

(I'm not sure about the details of the current it can draw. The specs can be found at https://www.seagate.com/www-content/dat ... ble-gb.pdf.)

Edit 1: I've also read that it is possible to find inofficial power supplies for RPi with 3A instead of 2.5A. Would this be a better choice for me?

Edit 2: According to this thread the "operating power as .7 watt idle and 5.3 watt writing large media files"

[W. H. Heydt]

Thanks for the reply.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. If I use the official power supply 5V 2.5A, would it work with the Seagate Expansion Portable Drive?

(I'm not sure about the details of the current it can draw. The specs can be found at https://www.seagate.com/www-content/dat ... ble-gb.pdf.)

That's the problem. Unless you know the maximum current requirement for the drive, no one can tell you if it will work the way you want. With a 2.4A PSU, the Pi will be able to supply a total of 1.2A to the 4 USB ports. If the drive needs more than that...it won't work. If its peak current is less than that, it *might* work, depending on what else is drawing power for a USB port.

Edit 1: I've also read that it is possible to find inofficial power supplies for RPi with 3A instead of 2.5A. Would this be a better choice for me?

That increases the chances that you will still have 5v when the Pi is at full load/max USB draw, but it won't add any available power. The Pi has a current limiting polyfuse and simply can't draw more than the rated current. This is a safety feature.

Edit 2: According to this thread the "operating power as .7 watt idle and 5.3 watt writing large media files"

5.3W would be 1.06A, which is perilously close to the 1.2A maximum available. It also doesn't specify the max current draw when the drive is spinning up at start. This leads me to strongly suspect that the answer is that you can't run that drive directly from a Pi. Use a poweredd hub instead.

[DougieLawson]

I had no end of trouble running a 3B+ on an IKEA phone charger.

It's excellent for charging phones - I use it every day.

The 3B+ would boot OK then die randomly at around 06:00 every day.

Buy the £8 official Raspberry PSU and run away happy for decades.

[bholland84]

Get a good power supply. The rpi ones run at 5.25V so even voltage drops are not a problem. I wouldn't be cheap with power. I have 1 drive attached and there isn't a problem.

[rpdom]

I have a Pi 3B+ that has been running off a Seagate Expansion 2TB drive since I got it. I use the official power supply and have had no problems.

[niska]

I have a Pi 3B+ that has been running off a Seagate Expansion 2TB drive since I got it. I use the official power supply and have had no problems.

Great! Do you use the included Seagate USB-cable?

[rpdom]

I have a Pi 3B+ that has been running off a Seagate Expansion 2TB drive since I got it. I use the official power supply and have had no problems.

Great! Do you use the included Seagate USB-cable?

I do, but now I've checked my 3B+ is using a different 2TB drive. I have the Seagate ones on a 2B and a 3B, also both using the official PSUs. I did use a Seagate on the 3B+ at one point.

[niska]

Thanks for replying. I'm considering buying 4TB instead of 2TB (still Seagate). Would a larger drive equal more need for power? Or do they usually have the same spec?

[niska]

I'm planning on buying a 2TB HDD (or 4TB) tomorrow and test the setup with my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. I'm using headless RPi - is there a way for me to detect under-voltage warnings, including short under-voltage dip?

[rpdom]

You can use the vcgencmd get_throttled command.

It returns various values depending on the cpu speed and if overtemp/undervolt have occurred, or are occurring.

My Pi 3B+ is very lightly used, so it returns 0x0, which means nothing to report.

The values you'd be interested in are bits 0 (0x1) "Under-voltage detected", and 16 (0x10000) "Under-voltage has occurred".

[niska]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I've bought the 4TB HDD mentioned above.

I've plugged it in and sudo vcgencmd get_throttled returned 0x0.

However, after formatting as ext4 and installation of netatalk, vcgencmd get_throttled now returns 0x80000.

0x80000 means SOFT_TEMP_LIMIT. Not sure what this actually means in my scenario. Should I be worried?

Note: I don't have any plans on adding any other device to the remaining USB-ports.

[rpdom]

No, you don't have to worry about the soft temp limit. That just means your CPU has been working moderately hard and has warmed up quite a bit (not really hot) and has slowed down from 1.4GHz to 1.2GHz to reduce the heat. It's still the same speed as the maximum n a Pi 3B.

[niska]

Thank you. I also forgot to mention that I'm now using the official power source.