LostCircuits, Tech Advice Guide

Navigate:

Advice
Beginners
BIOS Guide
CPUs
Links
Mainboards
Memory
Network
Storage
Video/Sound Cards

Search:

Prices:

LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: Top Page The Buzzwords Eight Ways to Kill a HDD (I) Eight Ways to Kill a HDD (II) IBM 60GXP Maxtor D740X-6L UATA 133 add-on card and setup HDTach WinBench98 Conclusion
IBM 60GXP vs. Maxtor D740X-6L Behind the Buzzwords
(Review by MS, July 14, 2002)

Buzzwords

There are a lot of buzz words that are being thrown around when it comes to HDDs, there are a lot of myths, too and here is a short rundown of some of the issues involved.

With today's high speed storage technology, a certain fragility is already built into the devices. Rotational speeds of 7200 rpm cause more wear and tear on the bearings, on the motor and all other mechanical parts than the older 5400 rpm technology. Heat and storage capacity are additional factors that come into play. Noise is an additional factor, remember the older Seagates that sounded like a hamster wheel, not to mention the Samsung drives from about 5 years ago that would be worthy competitors to the current high performance coolers for AMD processors.

Keep in mind, though, that noise is not only a factor of any given HDD but that the noise level also strongly depends on the environment the drive is in. I have read probably a few dozen reviews on noise of HDDs but each and everyone has carefully avoided the issue of the case. Aluminum cases are almost by definition louder than steel cases. The construction of the drive bay is important with respect to the noise level of the drive as is the mounting of the drive, that is, if the screws are not fastened so that the drive has a minimum amount of play, it will use that and it ain't pretty. Granted that this is a factor that comes into play in the rarest of cases only, I have come across systems that sounded like junkyards for this very reason.

Another issue is the IDE/UATA controller of the mainboard. The same drive taken from one mainboard and hooked up to a different chipset / IDE controller will in most cases run at a different noise level, either louder or quieter. Within the same system, if the drive is hooked up to a PCI UATA / RAID controller instead of the standard IDE interface, there can be differences like day and night and what works one way for one drive can have the opposite effect on other drives, therefore, there is no point in trying to make even qualitative recommendations. One thing that is very consistent, though, is that two drives in a striping RAID configuration are in most cases quieter than a single drive in the same system.

Keep in mind that those are observations that accumulated over about a decade and which are very subjective and not quantifiable, except with a huge amount of effort.

Inducing Sudden Death of a Drive

Again, this is based on some personal experiences as well as on collection of data from several thousand of customer support cases and there are some very clear trends here regarding what are the most common ways of killing a drive, very simple and very easy to replicate.

next page: => Eight Ways To Kill Your HDD =>

All advice and educational articles on LostCircuits are free, but if you feel you can, please make a small donation to us!
Thank you!

General disclaimer: This page only reflects the author's personal opinion and assumes no responsibility whatsoever regarding any of the contents or any damages that may occur explicitly or implicitly from reading the contents of this site. All names and trademarks mentioned in this review are the exclusive property of the respective parent companies.
All contents of this site are protected by international copyright laws. Reproduction of the contents even in parts is not allowed except after written permission by the author and referral to this site.
Copyright 2002 - 2008 LostCircuits

LOSTCIRCUITS