After burning out my 2 HDD with a 12V power adapter, I was looking to get a more wide voltage range power supply option. I would like to design my own PCB with the proper power supply and system indicator but for just one unit it is overkill. Moreover switching regulator design can be hard to do correctly and component selection is a nightmare.

I have came across the following power supply option :

• Mini PWR 5V/3V/ADJ 2A
• DC-DC Power Module 25W
• PicoPSU-80-WI-32V

The PicoPSU are quite interesting power supplies. A NAS system designed around a regular motherboard could use such option. It could be used as a lab power supply with the suitable breakout board. In any case 80W is a little too much for my 10W-Max disk bay.

The boards from micro4you made me realize that I had one from the recycled LCD screen I got. The screen had this step down converter board generating 12V. From the board layout and the IC datasheet, I changed the feedback to generate a 5V output. 5.35V is within the supply range of the HDD and the PM.

I got a new HDD to put in my DIY Disk Bay and assembled everything together.

The power board input range is between 9V and 30V. A 12V power adapter powers correctly the Disk Bay.

I connected the disk bay to the router and tested the performance. I had SATA Port Multiplier disconnecting randomly at the beginning. Changing the eSATA cable solved my issue. Under Linux, I have successfully copied files at 45Mo/s on both disk simultaneously over my Gigabit Ethernet connection.