How many hard drives can be connected to a computer?

I bought 100 4TB hard drives and used them on 3 servers before.
Now I found that the daily power consumption is relatively high.

I recently bought a storage cabinet that can hold 108 hard drives. I am considering putting all 4T hard drives in the storage cabinet and then connecting them to a server. In this way, I only need to open one server, which can save a lot of electricity bills down.

But running wallets and so many hard disks on one server at the same time will reduce the speed of scanning disks?
There are now a total of 160 hard drives ,running with windows server 2019.

no limit, I connected 160 drives to a computer with USB HUB, and I believe this is not the limit

Check this spec most efficient which I am using it now come with 50pcs HDD with 18tb each

https://www.martview.com/chia-minning-farm-desktop-plotting-computer-50-acrylic-hard-disk-locations-without-hdd.html

Instead of using the 100 power supplies, you can easy connect them to a larger PSU which will power 20-40 , does need some modding but will reduce cost of electricity.

A lenghty thread started by @enderTown but might give you some ideas https://chiaforum.com/t/scalable-diy-sata-jbod-will-store-over-250-disks/10937

Or you go this way :wink: also a DIY in this case using refurbished antminers S9 and power them through solar power…

Anyway that wasn’t a perfect solution - it works but well - but to power HDD’s could work also and probably way better due to much lower power consumption

You could wonder why antminers trying to place outside, well ever heard a vaccuum cleaner at max power 24/7 you gonna have that noise polution with antminers … so CHIA plotting/farming is a luxery, silent …

Now if someone would invent the heat generated to electrical power by Bitcoin and other ASIC coins, they could all become a tad more green …

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no limit. I have 240 directly connected to one machine.